# Nielsen's Maskarade On DVD- You'll have a ball !



## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Carl Nielsen's second and last opera "Maskarade", is considered the Danish national opera, and probably the only Scandinavian opera performed with any regularity in other countires,and not that frequently at that. 
Too bad, because this is one of the best comic operas ever written, and a total delight.
I got to know it several years ago from the excellent Decca recording conducted by Ulf Schirmer,a German,not a Dane, and just got the DVD of the opera performed by the Danish
Royal Opera at the recently opened and spectacular Copenhagen opera house. It's from Da Capo of Denmark,which is primarily a CD label. The conductor is the distinguished Danish maestro Michael Schonwandt,music director of the Royal Danish opera.
It's a winner ! Nielsen's music overflows with high spirits and wit, and the entire cast ,chorus and orchestra perform with great panache and comic flair.
It's the merry story of shenanigans and tomfoolery at a Copenhagen masked ball. 
The opera was originally set in the early 18th century, and the story is based a play by the Norwegian/Danish playwright Ludvig Holberg, whom you may remember from Grieg's Holberg Suite for strings.
The current production by the Danish opera director Caspar Bech Holten updates the action to the present, fortunately with no damage to the opera,unlike other updated productions of operas which have been a travesty of the composer's dramamtic intentions.
Leander is a fun-loving young man in Copenhagen who enjoys the riotous masked balls of Copenhagen with his wise-cracking servant Henrik ,over the objections of his pompous,stuffy and strait-laced father. His mother doesn't mind,and used to enjoy dancing in her youth.
Leander's parents have chosen a young lady for him to marry whom he has never met.
But in the last act,which takes place at the ball, he meets a young lady with whom he falls in love. By a weird coincidence she turns out to be the same young lady he is supposed to marry !
In the mean time,there is lots of intrigue,mistaken identity and all manner of shenanigans.
Bech's production is brilliantly inventive, and the masqueraders are dressed as among other things,hippies,Hare Krishnas, Marilyn Monroe,Elvis and other people Nielsen could never have conceived of. But it's all great fun, and there is plenty of dancing and even an acrobatic act !
The cast is almost entirely Danish,with a couple of Swedish singers. None are international superstars, but they include basss Stephen Milling as the pompous fuddy duddy father Jeronimus,and Susanne Resmark as Leander's mother Magelone,who sings the same role on the Decca CD. The late Aage Haugland was Jeronumus on the recording.
However, the cast is uniformly excellent vocally, and their comic acting could hardly be bettered.
Conductor Schonwandt gives the delightful Nielsen score all the sparkle and wit one could want,and the audience has a ball-literally ! So will you. Don't miss this delightful DVD.
It's easily available from amazon.com.


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