Robert Kurka
The Good Soldier Schweik

* Jason Collins (Schweik)
* Marc Embree (Lieutenant Lukash)
* Kelli Harrington (Mrs. Muller)
* Buffy Baggott (Baroness von Botzenheim)

Chicago Opera Theater/Alexander Platt.
Cedille CDR 90000 062  TT: 103:50

Summary for the Busy Executive: Fun.

Composer Robert Kurka died way too young, in his thirties, of leukemia.
During his brief career, he wrote at least two symphonies, a bunch of
chamber pieces, and the opera, The Good Soldier Schweik.  Kurka first
composed an orchestral suite inspired by the Hasek novel.  The suite has
become not only his most popular work, but one of the few post-World War
II American works played more than once.  The opera, with a witty libretto
by Kurka and "Strange Fruit" lyricist Abel Meerepol, uses sections and
themes from the suite.  The suite and the opera retain the unusual mix
of satiric edge and good humor found in Hasek's original.  Schweik has
become one of the great comic figures - a survivor of hellish situations
through a genial non-resistance.  Schweik always appears accommodating
and willing to please.  He never complains, and this frustrates those
who would give him grief.  It's Brecht before Brecht.  Indeed, Brecht
appropriated the character for his own Schweyk in the Second World War.

I know of only one U. S. production other than the Chicago Opera Theater's,
although the opera had achieved success in Europe.  The great Walter
Felsenstein staged it for the Komische Oper.  It's the kind of opera
American companies shy away from since the plot concerns neither sex nor
domestic murder.  After all, it took Janacek's Cunning Little Vixen
roughly forty years to receive its (amateur) American premiere.  Unlike
Europe, the U. S. generally does not consider opera either drama or
theater -- rather, spectacle and vocal gymnastics, an excuse for admiring
pretty scenery and costumes and betting whether someone will make a high
C.  Indeed, so limited is the American opera scene that a prominent
critic at Schweik's premiere complained in print, "Where are the violins?"
Kurka's orchestra consists of winds, brass, and percussion, more or less
following the lines of Brecht and Weill's Dreigroschenoper.  Since the
Blitzstein version (The Threepenny Opera) was enjoying a record run in
New York at the time, one wonders how such an operatic milestone could
have slipped the critic's mind.  Then consider the Met's repertory in
the thirty years following the Dreigroschenoper's premiere.

Kurka's music sounds a little like Weill's Threepenny and a little like
Prokofiev's Kije.  The suite is wonderful, a complete success.  The
classic recording with Robert Whitney and the Louisville Orchestra is
available on Albany TROY044.  It's joined by Mennin's cello concerto
(Janos Starker, soloist) and Piston's Symphony No. 1, both conducted by
Jorge Mester.  The opera has its problems, chief among them that, unlike
Weill and Prokofiev, Kurka has a devil of a time setting words.  Kurka's
biggest successes lie in the purely instrumental overture, dances, and
interludes.  The vocal line is usually some sort of stutter, as if the
singer occasionally tripped over his own tongue.  A little of this seems
deliberate on the part of the composer, most does not.  The libretto is
good enough to deserve better.  Nevertheless, as drama, the opera
definitely works.  It's a good evening of theater.  One understands what
attracted Felsenstein.

The singers are good, if not first-rate.  The broad farce of the libretto
suits the acting skills of most opera singers, and they take to it.
Fortunately, Jason Collins (Schweik) acts better than run-of-the-mill.
He not only makes you feel the warmth of the character but manages to
put you in the position of Schweik's antagonists: you are never sure
whether Schweik is a genuine idiot or very, very devious.  The Chicago
Opera band plays crisply and with a dash of bitters.  Conductor Alexander
Platt moves things along.

The sound is fine.

Steve Schwartz