Among the musical venues at the palace of
Haydn's employer, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, was a marionette theater.
Haydn composed several little operas for this venture so alien to the 19th century's way of thinking about music, and sure enough, most have been lost. The present work, Philemon und Baucis (1773), survives in the most complete form, but still took a good deal of editing of text and music to bring it to a performable state. The text restoration by Hermann Beil, done in conjunction with the 200th anniversary of
Haydn's death in 2009, is admirably effective and brings this very rare
Haydn work alive. The piece is like a singspiel, with spoken dialogue (some of it trimmed by Beil to restore continuity destroyed by missing music) framing sung arias by six marionette characters taken from an episode in the "Metamorphoses" by Roman poet Ovid. You might be expecting satirical comedy from a marionette show, but the doggerel-like libretto offers something different, reworking the Roman material into a paean to virtue and divine benevolence that
Haydn's audience would have read as an attempt to butter up the Austrian emperor. This said, the work is charming. Philemon and Baucis are a peasant couple who have seen their son and his fiancée destroyed by a lightning bolt on their wedding day. They offer hospitality to the gods Jupiter and Mercury, who have come to terra firma in order to sweep away a corrupt human society with a flood (adding a biblical element to the mix). But the two gods are so impressed with the generosity of Philemon and Baucis that they decide not only to spare them but also to revive their son, Aret, and his confused-but-soon-delighted bride Narcissa, and finally to turn their house into a palace. (Ovid added a lovely third detail: at the end, Philemon and Baucis are turned into an oak tree and a lime tree. But
Haydn's opera leaves this out.)
Haydn's draws back from the pomp of the gods' opening appearance, complete with violent thunderstorm, to a long series of quiet arias by the reawakened lovers; these ought to inspire someone to try to stage the work, for
Haydn creates a mood of musical enchantment here. All the singers keep the volume down and inhabit their characters effectively, but the chorus selected by
Haydn Sinfonietta Wien conductor
Manfred Huss is too large for what must have been the quite intimate dimensions of
Haydn's theater. The super audio sound from the BIS label, however, is excellent and captures the entire dynamic range of the performance. Recommended for any
Haydn collection or for any producer looking for a short comic opera that most audiences won't know.