Not Taking it Seriously: Roland Matthews feels short-changed by a production of Wagner’s early comedy

Review of Das Liebesverbot, directed Holten, conducted Bolton, Madrid, 2016 (Opus Arte, 1 DVD).

July 2017, Volume 11, Number 2, 75–7.

Any doubts about how we are to respond to this staging of Wagner’s second opera from the Teatro Real, Madrid – the first time the work has been committed to film – are promptly dispelled during the overture when an image of the young Wagner projected on the frontcloth comes alive with increasingly animated facial gestures. Twinkling eyes, pursed lips, eyebrows moving with the musical pulse – the message from the author seems all too clear: we are not to take proceedings seriously. Yet when with eyes closed he goes into a reverie at the restatement of the splendidly Weberian strings theme (dreaming of future glory perhaps) we are reminded also that the circumstances in which Das Liebesverbot was written could hardly have been more earnest and uncertain for a young composer earning a precarious living and lacking recognition.