Schreker : Irrelohe. Sadnick, Blunier.

   in Opera Now (Feb, 2012)
Franz Schreker (1878-1934) has been making a comeback in recent years. Irrelohe (‘insane blaze’), however, has not done as well as other works, mainly perhaps because of the bizarre plot, containing congenital pyromania, rape, attempted murder, a gloomy castle and other ingredients worthy of Bram Stoker, with a dash of Nietzsche and some of the wilder fantasies swirling around in 1920s Germany. The whole is bizarrely yanked at the last minute to an unlikely Happy End worthy of Handel. As always, Schreker wrote his own libretto. The music is of high quality, very Mahlerian, with impressive orchestral writing to which Stefan Blunier and the Beethoven Orchester Bonn do great justice. The …