Ludus Danielis

The words medieval opera have been bantered around in reference to medieval mystery plays, the crude pageants staged by various monasteries and trade guilds both to entertain and provide instruction about the content of some biblical stories. As the Bible had yet to be translated into any vernacular languages and services were conducted primarily in Latin, the mystery play was an immediate method through which the ordinary person could get a sense of the content of the Bible. Although music was part of the usual mix of a medieval mystery play, a few were highly invested in music, and the Ludus Danielis (The Play of Daniel), copied around 1230 into British Library manuscript Egerton 2615 but dating to the middle of the twelfth century, is one of the earliest and most detailed sources of this kind. Given with some indications of instrumentation and stage action, the Ludus Danielis still plays well in the twenty first century and has been revived numerous times, first famously by Noah Greenberg in the late '50s and also successfully given in touring productions mounted by Munich-based ensemble Estampie and the Harp Consort. This Hungaraton effort, performed by Schola Hungarica under Janka Szendrei, historically comes between Greenberg's and the later ones mentioned, as it was recorded in 1983.
Medieval mystery plays were not operas; they were aimed at the townspeople, not the nobility, and the usual division of numbers into arias, choruses, and recitatives common to opera did not exist in such works. The aspect that characterizes this Ludus Danielis apart from other realizations is that it's not trying to be much more than what the manuscript specifies. The only instrumental complement in play is a very limited use of percussion and voices carry 99 percent of what is heard in chorus and among solo singers. The Latin pronunciation is impeccable, and the recording is well engineered even for Hungaraton; both instruments and voices occupy a 3D space, even though this is a conventional compact disc with no special formatting. Later productions of Ludus Danielis are far more elaborate; this version is only six minutes longer than the 40 minutes that Greenberg's version took in 1958, whereas the one by the Harp Consort, recorded in 1998, is nearly twice as long. Such length is achieved through the addition of instrumental interludes, improvised sections, and through drawing pieces from elsewhere into the text. For those who would like an expert performance of Ludus Danielis without all the trimmings, that by Schola Hungarica is just about ideal.