It’s very rare for a new opera to make it on to disc before it is seen in public. But Poul Ruders’ fifth stage work, due to receive its world premiere at Santa Fe Opera next week, is an exception.
The Thirteenth Child was jointly commissioned by Santa Fe and the Odense Symphony, and this recording was made in Denmark and New York in 2016 and 2018, and released to coincide with the premiere on the record label founded by David Starobin, who, with his wife, Becky, is responsible for the opera’s libretto.
The text is adapted and amplified from one of the lesser-known fairytales of the Brothers Grimm, The Twelve Brothers, known as The Twelve Princes in some editions. A king banishes his 12 sons so that his 13th child, a daughter, can succeed him. When the daughter grows up she discovers what her father has done, and embarks on a search for her long-lost brothers, before everyone lives happily ever after.
In the Grimms’ original, only the king’s youngest son has a name, Benjamin. But the Starobins give all their characters more precise identities – the King becomes Hjarne, king of Frohagord, his queen Gertrude, his daughter Lyra, and so on – and they flesh out the action, too, adding an evil cousin and a prince who is the love interest for princess Lyra. But even with two acts compressed into less than 80 minutes, there is plenty of space for lyrical solo numbers in Ruders’ score, which veers between mid-Atlantic neoromanticism and something edgier and more expressionist in the orchestral interludes. But the work never gets too demanding, and after his previous opera, a rather unconvincing adaptation of Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark, it’s easy to understand why Ruders should want to tackle something different; it’s particularly Sarah Shafer in the role of Lyra who makes the most of his smoothly contoured vocal writing.
Also out this week
The latest offering in Palazzetto Bru Zane’s sumptuously packaged French opera series marks the bicentenary of the birth of Jacques Offenbach, with La Périchole, taken from a run of stage performances in Bordeaux last year.
It’s sparkily conducted by Marc Minkowski, who opts for the 1874 three-act revision of the score, complete with dialogue; the period instruments of Les Musiciens du Louvre are in the pit, with a cast led by the mezzo Aude Extrémo as the street singer who is lined up by the viceroy of Peru to be his next mistress. Extrémo doesn’t sound to be at her best, and she’s rather outpointed by the tenor Stanislas de Barbeyrac as her lover Piquillo, and Alexandre Duhamel in the buffo role of the Viceroy. All good, Spanish-flavoured froth, though.
