Henze's Prince of Homburg in Frankfurt
Important Composer Gets a Perfect Production
By: Susan Hall - Oct 22, 2024
Hans Werner Henze’s Prince of Homburg is playing at Oper Frankfurt. Jens-Daniel Herzog has created a dream world full of beauty mixed with horror. Orchestral textures have just the right detail, with a density of line and activity.
The production is set outside time. The original play, a classic, by Heinrich von Kiest, takes place as the Battle of Battle of Fehrbellin (1675) commences. Victory helped Frederich Wiiams (the Elector) defeat the Swedes in what is now northern Germany and testified to Frederick William’s success in building up the Brandenburg-Prussian army.
Neither the playwright nor the composer and his librettist Ingeborg Bachmann, were committed to history. Heroism is not seen as absolute virtue, but shaded by the demands of civilization. The play deals with the conflict between honor and obedience, man's conscience and the laws of state, the individual and society. These are eternal concerns, even more relevant today. The Prince of Homburg is modern as well as classic.
The story is simple. Prince Friedrich, a brave cavalry officer, disobeys an order. Although he is instrumental in winning a crucial battle, he is court-martialed by the ruling elector, and sentenced to death. The Prince is at first confident that he will be released and then terrified that he will be executed. We hear Henze’s personal experience of trauma drawn in music, as execution is contemplated. The sounds of acceptance are yielded up by the orchestra under the superb conductor Takeshi Moriuchi. At last the Prince realizes that authority is correct. In the final act, the Elector begins to question his own values and realizes that even under law and order there must be a reward for moral conduct too.
Theodor Adorno told Henze that the music was not chaotic enough. Henze remarked, "What a thing to say! There you are every day, trying to put something reasonable and clear on paper, and somebody comes and says it is not sufficiently chaotic." We hear a riot of color and imagination. A golden thread of lyricism and narrative drives the work forward. It is both effusive and clear, gentle and emotionally charged.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, writing music for Henze was an irresistible compulsion. Some have called it spectral. Certainly, textures are built. The sounds of emotional tension, the drumbeats of the battlefield, a horn’s cry to battle, scratching rapid movements at the top of the strings and also beautiful musical lines in chores and also the lovely singing of Natalie, (Magdalena Hinterdobler of the Ensembles of singers at Frankfurt Oper.)
The men too are in splendid voice. Domen Krizaj in the title role is on stage for all three acts presented as a unified whole. His physical reactions are relevant movements that never cease to amaze. Yet his dream-like struggle to do the right thing captivates in vocal lines.
The set’s turntable is home to a cell-like rectangle covered with see-thru netting, which serves as an imprisonment. Another skeleton of a rectangular box on which most of the opera’s action takes place. Their shapes give the illusion of a linear movement across stage front lipt and rear. In fact, we discover, in some circles which appear to be on an oval, that they’re probably in customary positions used for maximum effect in Herzog’s staging. Lighting by Joachim Klein turns a deep dark night blue into fiery red and then a glowing warm yellow as a morally complex but emotionally satisfying concussion is reached. The costumes are of various primary colors and often appear as a paintings. The soldiers wear red jackets. (The love interest is a soldier!)
Moriuchi captured the dense timbral references and carried them, as the composer intended, on a light cushion. Voice and orchestra often combined to added effect. Yet the orchestra could be used also as a sound effect, always organically erupting (if not messy enough for some purists like Theodore Adorno).
Annette Schoenmueller as the Kurfuerstin camped it up occasionally, as did soldiers in the background. Henze winks in the music and Jens- DanieHerzog encourages body winks to match the mood.
Henze describes his music as the sound of his inner life: speaking to human emotion and contributing to contemporary society. Music for Henze was the living, breathing sound of resistance to any kind of system, a means of creating political and cultural freedom.
I bought it in Frankfurt, and when the final curtain dropped and then didn’t rise and didn’t rise and didn't rise for bows, I smiled. Well, are they telling us we have just dreamed this opera.
The curtain finally rose and the singers were greeted with the wild applause they deserved.
Frankfurt Oper has set the standard for the performance of Henze’s music in celebration of the 100th anniversary of his birth in 2026.