Scan 5
Musical Courier 1896-12-23: Vol 33 Iss 877, 1896
20 lines. Read by computer on 26 September 2026. Printed page 6. See the scan on archive.org.
1rious state of her health placed an inseparable barrier between them, and he finally forced her to take refuge in a convent, where she soon after died of a broken heart, knowing full well that Count Wulf only wished to hasten her death in order to be able to marry a budding girl of exceeding beauty whose rich estates adjoined his own. Count Wulf did not wait long after his first wife's death, but proffered his suit for Jutta's hand to her father, by whom he was accepted. But the young woman offered a resistance which was as determined as it seemed inexplicable, until the suspicious father, a chum of Count Wulf's, and blindly given over to his interests, discovered that one of the young knights attached to his own household was the secretly accepted lover of his daughter. In the scene that followed this discovery the father heeded not Jutta's prayers nor her tears, and, having killed her young lover before her very eyes, he marries, her off to the older count, too late, however, for all parties concerned. The young girl, in the unguarded solitude of her existence, had given to her lover Peregrinus more than merely her heart. And now in her loathing for Count Wulf, whom she deemed the personification of all vice, and in the love for her unborn child, she knew but one means to save herself from the hateful embrace of her legitimate husband, the Count. A feud had arisen during the wedding festivities, and Count Wulf was detained by the bloody consequences. On his return to the castle Malmort his young bride offered him the cup of welcome—but with it a drink of death. He was poisoned, and died before he could descend from his horse. Jutta would have taken her own life also, had it not been for her unborn child, but now having in a way in self-defense committed the evil deed, and the child, Palma, being born in due time, Jutta began a life of virtue, justice and authority which soon became the admiration of Charlemagne's empire. Though young, yet her daring, her keenness of judgment, her contempt of hardships and of death, made her famous among her followers. The emperor gave her power over life and death, and soon she was as much feared as she was admired. In her sternness toward everybody, however, there was one redeeming trait, one luminous feature—the overpowering, passionate love for her child, a beautiful girl. After her crime her soul had been governed by two passions—her abhorrence of the vicious and her love for her offspring. In her riper womanhood these two roles of her feelings grew still stronger and became more marked. And I may as well state right here that this delineation of Jutta's character, the constant and frequently quite sudden transition from one feeling into the other, the exquisite womanly softness, and the fierce hardness of an almost sexless ruler of lives and consciences, is admirably portrayed musically in Herman's opera.
3The curtain rises when Palma has reached the age of seventeen, and when petty foreign rulers attempt an occasional onslaught upon Jutta's domains, the invaders thinking it an easy matter to overthrow the rule of two defenseless women. The son of Count Wulf by his first wife, Wulfrin, had been taken away to Italy before Wulf's second marriage, and stepmother and stepson, both now in the prime of their lives, had never met. Neither he nor anyone else knew of Jutta's crime of having poisoned her husband. There were, however, rumors afloat, and people occasionally did and would talk about Count Wulf's sudden and mysterious taking off, after his young wife had offered him the cup of welcome. 'Tis true she had apparently tasted of the cup herself before she offered it to him, but still the circumstances were strange and looked suspicious. The dauntless pluck of Jutta silenced suspicions, which however were never quite allayed, and now she sent down to Italy to beg Wulfrin to return home, if only for a while, and to destroy these ugly rumors by his presence, for little as she feared or cared for herself, the future of her child was at stake. Wulfrin did not come. What did he care for the two strange women? Why should he seek again the spot in which he had spent such an unhappy childhood? Thus he remained stubborn until a young squire, a neighbor of Jutta's, named Walramus, who was deeply enamored of Palma, his former playmate, made the journey to Italy and prevailed upon Wulfrin to return home.
5And here the long expose of the opera ends. The drama, for the explanation of which a few lines will suffice, sets in. Both men, Wulfrin and Walramus, are captured by the troops of the Longobards' prince, Witichis, when already near Jutta's castle. While Walramus is liberated by Witichis so that he may bring as ransom the costly family jewels, Jutta herself kills in a raid the Longobard prince and brings her stepson in triumph to her castle. Here she demands from Wulfrin to be judged, and the stepson pronounces her free from all guilt in his father's sudden death. The warrior, who has never known family ties, becomes completely subjugated by Jutta's apparently noble character, and more so by the almost passionate devotion and the exquisite attachment of his half sister, Palma. She is the betrothed of Walramus. But in the second act, when Wulfrin takes his sister to the home of Walramus to give her away to him in marriage, a sudden indomitable passion for her rises in the brother's heart. As he becomes conscious of his own guilty feelings, which at first he tries to overcome, he loses all mastery over himself. During the dances and festivities when Palma affectionately tries to ween Wulfrin from his sullen silence, he seizes her and throws her against the rocks with vehemence, as though she were the embodied temptation of the evil one.
7A terrible tempest breaks loose, as if the fury of the elements were joining in the storm that rages in Wulfrin's breast. He picks up the seemingly lifeless body of his sister and carries it across the mountain to her mother, who is awaiting their return in dreadful anxiety. In a scene of stirring grandeur Jutta tears from Wulfrin the secret of his heart, and he rushes away to accuse himself before the emperor. Jutta is left alone with her daughter, who is not seriously hurt, only senseless and stunned. While the mother is watching at the couch of her beloved child sleep overtakes her. She dreams of Peregrinus, her long lost lover, and in her words she betrays to the daughter, who was awakened by her mother's speech, the secret of her birth. Before Jutta's and the spectators' eyes the dream assumes a definite shape, and she finally discovers in the ghost that approaches her the figure of her murdered husband, Wulf. From her bosom she draws the phial which still contains some of the poison, and shrieks the confession of her murder at the ghost. But Palma has also heard it, and between waking and dreaming she rushes toward her mother with an exclamation, while the apparition of Count Wulf disappears. Jutta awakens from her dream with a start, and knows that her long hidden guilt is a secret no longer.
9In the fourth act the Emperor approaches, coming with Wulfrin to pass judgment. Jutta is leading her daughter after her illness, which has robbed the young girl of all temporary recollections of the immediate past, into the garden of her castle. Here, leaning upon her mother's breast, Palma discovers the phial, and the accident brings back to her suddenly the incidents of the terrible night of her mother's revelations. Before the girl's accusations the mother no longer quails, but confesses all, giving her life, from which all joys have long since departed, into the safe keeping of her daughter. Palma feels that she may and does love Wulfrin, who is not her brother, and concludes to die with her hero before the Emperor. Then Jutta's pride and resistance are broken, she confesses all to Charlemagne, but the Emperor is loath to believe in the guilt of this hitherto irreproachable woman, the stainless "Woman Judge," and deems her action as the last and greatest sacrifice of motherly affection. Jutta, however, proves the truth by taking the remnants of the deadly poison with which she had killed her husband. The Emperor has his men set fire to Malmort, the seat of all this horror, and leads the young people, united in love, with him to happier climes and a brighter future.
11Reinhold L. Herman has written to this libretto music which little resembles his previous operas. One point ought to be mentioned at the outset. The composer told me that the work was written in one sitting—a sitting of ten long months, to be sure—with a constant strain and great intensity, and was snatched away from his writing table by the copyists before the last note was dry, so to speak. Thus Herman neither saw again nor heard a note of the orchestration until within a few days previous to the performance. It is quite natural therefore that the orchestral score must contain some excrencences, some Wagner reminiscences and superfluities which certainly would have been eliminated if but a few months had intervened and a revision been feasible. I believe that these points, obvious at once and yet utterly irrelevant when the general worth of the score is considered, will be remedied, perhaps before the next repetition of the work, surely before another opera house gets hold of Wulfrin. As it was, the public of Cologne, to whom Herman was an utter stranger, absolutely decided in his favor. The composer was called out after each act, but the strongest ovations were tendered him after the second and fourth acts. The second act, after the long expose of the first act, is scenically as well as musically effective and beautiful, containing a great deal of variety. Even the only severe criticism on the work published in the Cologne papers (the other three are all laudatory) says: "The ballet is of such an exquisite grace and charm of melody that only a Frenchman could be supposed to be its author."
13The contrast from the sunny stillness of the mountains through which Wulfrin and Palma wander hand in hand to the gay festivities of the betrothal, later to the outbreak of the tempest and to the despair and almost brutal action of Wulfrin, is overpowering. The musical depicting of the emotions of remorse, anguish, love, revengeful triumph, and of all things awful that beset the breast of the guilty in the dead of night, make the third act (which belongs entirely to Jutta and Wulfrin) something remarkable. The song of Jutta at the bedside of her child is exquisite; the distant prayer of the nuns, accompanied in the orchestra only by the low rumblings of the double basses, is of most elevated conception. The ascending climax from the whisperings of the loving woman to the triumphal shriek of the outraged and once wicked wife, going through all the different phrases of her soul life and revealing the deepest recesses thereof, is exceedingly true and powerful. The gruesome approach of the ghostly apparition, the peculiar threatening sounds of the elements, as they try to sweep in through the window and staircase to add their part of weirdness and horror to the situation, are intensely dramatic.
15And then comes after this picture of night gloom one of the loveliest numbers of the opera—the duet of Jutta and Palma in the garden. It was sung by Miss Marion Weed (Palma), soprano, and Miss Olive Fremstad (Jutta), contralto, both Americans and pupils of Lilli Lehmann, in unsurpassed perfection. The entrance of the Emperor gives Herman a chance to show his mastery over choral masses and to employ the orchestra, with all its rich splendor, in a pompous yet melodious march in C major. The duet between Palma and Wulfrin (soprano and baritone), if I except a strong Siegmund reminiscence in the orchestra, is very original and effective. Miss Fremstad lent to the confession of Jutta (which in its utter musical simplicity almost returns to the ancient modes) such a touching expression that the gentle phrase which leads to the consoling end of the work kept the audience in their seats in charmed silence until the last note had floated away.
17The principal merit of the opera seems to me to be the happy delineation of the emotions, sad or joyful, of the different persons. The music allotted to Palma is of the purest and, so to speak, maidenly conception in modern opera. Miss Weed, who has been but a few months on the operatic boards, sang it admirably, and the slight hesitation in gestures and action rather added to the charm of her young girlishness. Miss Fremstad (Jutta), not gifted with a great but with a most expressive and artistically managed voice, aroused great enthusiasm in her many dramatic episodes, in which quite frequently she held the audience spellbound.
19Kaufing, the tenor (Walramus), has some charming bits of song allotted to him. He has a fine stage presence and a beautiful voice, but he needs a bit more of warmth and temperament to give fullest weight to his utterances. Fricke (Wulfrin) threw himself heart and soul into his part. He is a great favorite in Cologne—and also in Berlin, where he sang at Kroll's last summer. The difficult and quite dramatic title part gave him every opportunity
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