E-Mail This Article to a Friend Buried treasure Emmanuel Music revives Schumann’s Genoveva, plus BLO’s Onegin and Chameleon’s new Schubertiade BY DAVID WEININGER

In a letter of 1842, Robert Schumann wrote, "Do you know my prayer as an artist, night and morning? It is called ‘German Opera.’ Here is a real field for enterprise . . . something simple, profound, German."

This passionately expressed sentiment might surprise you, for there would seem to be no composer of the 19th century less interested in opera than Schumann. Many otherwise well-informed music lovers have no idea he ever wrote one. But write one he did: Genoveva, composed between 1847 and 1848, premiered in 1850, seldom revived, and now largely unknown. When German opera bloomed, it did so under Wagner, seemingly without the vital contribution that Schumann wanted so dearly to make.

We’ll get a chance to judge for ourselves next weekend when Emmanuel Music offers a concert version of Genoveva, an undertaking spurred by its multi-year series of concerts exploring all of Schumann’s chamber and vocal works. Given the opera’s under-the-radar status, it’s hardly a surprise to learn that it’s never been heard in Boston. But this occasion may be more than just an American premiere. According to Craig Smith, Emmanuel’s music director, there’s no evidence the piece has ever been performed anywhere in America.

"I discovered it in a funny way," he tells me over the phone. "Years ago, I spent an evening with Kurt Masur," who for many years directed the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. "And he said, ‘You know, the most exciting thing that I ever did in Leipzig was Genoveva.’ And it’s brought back every couple of years at the Leipzig Opera. The last performance was 2000. But I’ve never seen any sign that it was done in America."

So, what explains this near-total neglect? Smith points out that Schumann’s was hardly the only opera of the time to have disappeared from the repertory. "The only German opera between Beethoven and Wagner that’s kind of stuck is Weber’s Der Freischütz. And there are really a lot of interesting pieces there." He names Schubert’s Alfonso und Estrella, Weber’s Oberon, and Nicolai’s Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor. "Those are all really good early Romantic German operas." But our view of German opera tends to see most of these works as baby steps that lead to Wagner. "And I think that Wagner kind of swept away all that came before him."

Set in the eighth century, the story has young knight Siegfried going off to fight in the Crusades and leaving his wife, Genoveva, in the care of his most trusted friend, Golo, who of course is madly in love with her. After she rebuffs his advances, Golo and his mother, who’s a witch, devise an elaborate scheme to accuse Genoveva of adultery. She’s saved from execution when the ghost of the man with whom she’s claimed to have had the affair shows up to refute the charge. The villains sort of disappear at the end, and everything ends happily.

For all that this sounds convoluted, it has a host of connections with similar creations of its time. Smith is fascinated by the thought that three composers were simultaneously setting operas during the Crusades: Wagner’s Tannhäuser, Verdi’s I Lombardi, and Genoveva. And though he says that Schumann’s work "couldn’t be more different than Verdi’s," Smith sees numerous points of contact with Wagner. "The whole mediæval and magic combination is very like Tristan and very like Parsifal. And the first scene, a chorale with interludes, is without a doubt the model for the first scene in Die Meistersinger. It’s a big chorus piece, the way Tannhäuser and most German opera of that period is. There’s a war chorus in the first act that is as grand as anything in early Wagner."

On the music, Smith elaborates, "It’s very, very immediate, in a way. It’s full of a kind of mediævalism, and at the same time it’s full of a lot of Mendelssohnian sparkle. And it’s got an almost tub-thumping grandeur, too.

"Orchestrally it’s difficult. It’s typical of Schumann in that the string writing is loud but not high, so they have to cut through the middle. And there are moments when I wish that Schumann would reconsider the wind doublings. But I am not one of these people who think that Schumann didn’t know how to orchestrate. I think he knew exactly what he was doing. It’s just hard. But you make it work."

To bring this complex creature to life, Genoveva requires most of all singers who can not only bring their parts to life but also appreciate Schumann’s songful voice. "It’s that kind of specificity of words and the beautiful lyric line," Smith explains. "It is a deeply lyrical piece, and there are major, major Schumann moments here." Vocal rehearsals with a cast that includes such Emmanuel regulars as David Kravitz, James Maddalena, and Mark McSweeney are under way when I talk to Smith; he says he has very experienced lieder singers, and that’s what you’ve got to have, people who know how to put together Dichterliebe or Liederkreis.

"I really feel like a missionary about this piece," he says in conclusion. "I really think it needs to get known. The old musicologist Albert Einstein said that out of all 19th-century pieces, this one is the most tragically neglected. And he knew a lot of music."

Emmanuel Music presents Schumann’s Genoveva next Saturday, April 2, at 8 p.m. at Emmanuel Church, 15 Newbury Street in Boston. Tickets are $20 to $50; call (617) 536-3315.

OTHER VOICES. If the resuscitation of Schumann’s unheard masterpiece isn’t enough opera for you, stop by the Shubert Theatre, where Boston Lyric Opera will be presenting Eugene Onegin, Tchaikovsky’s supremely lyrical version of one of Pushkin’s literary masterpieces. Stephen Lord conducts and James Robinson directs. Evening performances are March 30 and April 1, 5, 8, and 12 at 7:30 p.m.; matinees are April 3 and 10 at 3 p.m. Tickets are $34 to $159; call (800) 447-7400.

One of the great 19th-century vocal traditions was the gathering known as the Schubertiade, where the composer and his friends would gather to try out the reticent master’s latest songs. The intrepid folks of Chameleon Arts Ensemble offer their own version of the Schubertiade next Saturday, "One Deep Chord Gave Answer" won’t have any songs, however; instead, it’ll be packed with thematic associations. Schubert’s lyrical Octet stands at the center, flanked by a very different octet, Varèse’s Octandre, and John Harbison’s November 18, 1828: A Hallucination in Four Episodes, a musical imagining of Schubert’s final hours. That’s April 2 at 8 p.m. at the First & Second Church, 66 Marlborough Street in Boston. The concert is a benefit for Transition House, New England’s first battered women’s shelter. Tickets are $16 to $34, and a 25 percent discount on any Chameleon concert ticket is offered if you bring a non-perishable food item; call (617) 427-8200.