Composed in 1832 on a libretto refused by Mendelssohn who found that it was too close to Weber’s Freischütz, Wolfgang Marschner’s Hans Heiling never broke out of Germany nor acquired the success Marschner had hoped for. This romantic opera holds the seeds of all the ingredients that would hence be developed by Wagner, but Marschner did not surpass, according to Piotr Kaminski, a relative expressive banality that the libretto failed to conceal. Beyond its own qualities and flaws, Hans Heiling remains to hold great historical importance in German opera. It is, along with Le Vampire by the same composer, a unifier between Weber’s initial romanticism and accomplished works. We can already find here the tragic destiny of the damned romantic heroes: the impossibility to reconcile their human nature with the death drive.
This recording, performed on stage during shows by the Essen opera in February 2018, gives precious information of a relatively forgotten period and shows how much Marschner wanted to combine the old (village fairs, drinking songs, love duets) with the new (a prologue precedes every opening of the curtain before the reveal of a redecorated stage). Certain melodies, like that of the Queen (O bleib bei mir) are well presented and Wagner would later remember them through his use of themes of Hans Heiling in the second act of his Walkyrie. © François Hudry/Qobuz