VON WEBER

Der Freischütz

ACT ONE

One of the current trends in the opera world, it would seem, demands that the director prove his creativity by changing the locale and period of the opera in question to something wildly different from what the misguided composer intended. Thus Aida moves to Cambodia, Cosi fan Tutte to South Carolina, Norma to God knows where.

This is a practice for which Pocket Opera has little tolerance, and one to which we have yielded only once, despite the relative ease with which we leap from one continent to another.

However, with tonight’s opera, Der Freischütz, we were tempted to make another exception. Aware that listeners have sometimes found the story puzzling, that others have brushed it aside as operatic nonsense, we wanted to underline the fact that its subject matter is by no means remote from the life that swirls around us. And so we toyed with the notion of updating it and changing the locale---from the heart of the deep, dark forest to the heart of the deep, dark city. Maybe Chicago. Our hero we would change from a huntsman to perhaps a salesman, a profession that I believe shares some of the same vocabulary -- making a hit, scoring, etc. -- and where the difference between success and failure is equally stark and clear-cut.

This particular young man is driven to succeed, not only for the sake of his career, but also in order to win the boss’ daughter. But the more the pressure is on him to prove himself, the more he distrusts his own ability. The closer he gets to the crucial test, the more he feels inwardly doomed to failure. The vicious circle is in full swing; his fear brings about the very loss of ability that he fears so.

In desperation, he turns to artificial help. The market is full of wonder drugs guaranteed to give a lift. He is ensnared by someone, already a victim, who can survive only by gaining new recruits. They get together at The Wolf’s Glen, a shadowy, sinister night club, a place where hallucinations run rampant, a hangout for members of the underworld, owned and operated by a godfather figure names Samiel.

The offer is enticing, diabolic, and irresistible: six free shots, six sure wins, power at your fingertips, instant success. But the seventh shot we don’t talk about. That one is aimed at you.

The young man succumbs, and is finally jolted back to his senses when the seventh shot strikes the person that he loves the most.

As I said, the notion was tempting, but we have resisted it. Does a Pocket Opera audience need to have the meaning spelled out? Certainly not. Interpret it as you will, but our setting remains the Bohemian Forest, on the eve of the trial shot. This is a ceremonial event, a test required of one who aspires to the position of Master Ranger. Max, our hero, is doubly motivated; with the position comes the hand of the girl that he loves. But recently he seems to have lost his grip. As the challenge gets closer, he feels increasingly helpless, more and more convinced that he will lose. The opera begins with a superb shot, a bull’s eye -- fired by someone else.

CHORUS:

A triumph! A cheer for the hero!

The man of the day, the front-runner!

A straight to the target, the shot was a stunner.

When put to the test

He comes off the best.

The farmer has mastered the art of the gunner . . .

Cuno, the father of Max’s fiancée, who presently holds the position that Max hopes to attain, is eager for Max to be his successor, and regards him already as a son-in-law. But he too is appalled and mystified by the recent run of failure, and warns him again that everything depends upon his performance the next day--a reminder that, however well meant, fails to instill the needed self-confidence.

MAX:

Oh, grim tomorrow!

Hold, hold back the rising sun.

CUNO:

Your joy or sorrow

Now depend upon your gun.

MAX:

How to face the future if again I fail? . . .

At this point, a third person intervenes. Friendly, to say the least; eager to assist, generous with advice, he seems to have a good deal of the positive attitude that Max so sorely lacks. His name is Caspar.

CASPAR:

Why the frozen stare, and why the cheek so pale?

Dare to thrive and flourish!

Enterprise and courage ever shall prevail.

Max is in no mood for the customary festivities that precede the trial shot. Ever genial, Caspar tries to cheer him up with a little drink:

Born into this vale of tears,

Prone to sorrow, prone to fears,

Age and ills attack us.

Care is no concern of mine

When I fill the glass with wine:

Hail to friendly Bacchus! . . .

Having broken the ice, Caspar now reveals something more of what he has in mind -- merely hoping, of course, to help out. But first, a demonstration. He points to an eagle, flying in the distance, far out of range. He gives Max a gun and orders him to shoot. The eagle falls. An incredible shot, an impossible shot--yet it succeeded, thanks to a miraculous bullet, guaranteed to shoot straight, to hit the mark every time. More such bullets are available, if Max chooses to assert himself, to take control of his own destiny, to leave the hopeless, mediocre rut that he is stuck in. Now is the time. The stars are auspicious, a one and only chance. He need but come at midnight to The Wolf’s Glen, where Caspar will be waiting.

Max is not taken in by Caspar’s benevolence, but the temptation is strong. He leaves in great perturbation. By the end of Act One, Caspar has no doubt of the outcome:

Off! Off! Already he is mine.

Silence! The fool’s not yet to know . . .

The stars henceforth shall cease to shine.

Agents of dark and doom enslave him;

No plea or call for help can save him . . .

Surround him, you spirits that rise out of hell.

Goad him until he grows defiant.

Surround him, confound him,

Coerce and compel;

Show who’s the dwarf and who is the giant.

Revenge! Revenge!

I rise to freedom again . . .

ACT TWO

Act Two opens inside the Master Ranger’s house where Agatha, his daughter, whom Max is in love with and whom he hopes to marry, is presently bandaging her forehead after a strange and startling accident. An ancestral portrait, after at least a century of good behavior, mysteriously and rather indecorously fell from the wall and hit her on the head. Aaenchen, her lively cousin, is standing on a ladder, hammering back the offending nail and, as usual, making light of the whole affair. Instead of dignified, irascible old men painted in oil and framed in oak that for no reason at all leave their venerable perch and decide to have a tumble, she would choose a young man, live and in the flesh -- and preferably good-looking:

Comes a fellow sheer perfection,

Sleek and slim with curly hair,

Eyes of blue and fair complexion --

Answer to a maiden’s prayer.

Learn to take the lad in tow

With some rules that every girl should know . . .

Although the night grows late, Agatha cannot retire before Max returns. Deeply in love herself, she shares his anxiety about the pending challenge, the single shot that will determine their future happiness. Torn between hope and foreboding, she waits at her window, gazing out into the night, where a radiant moon seems to belie the threat of storm that gathers on the horizon:

Gentle air, float my prayer

To the spheres in heaven turning.

May my melody

Rise toward eternity

Where the fire of love is burning . . .

Heart adoring, hands imploring,

Hear me, o Lord of all created.

Light provide us;

Angels, guide us

Safely toward our joy awaited . . .

Max returns, but only for a moment. Desperation has won out; he has made up his mind; he will go to The Wolf’s Glen. Nor can Agatha dissuade him, despite another eerie and disturbing revelation. It seems that the miraculous shot that felled the eagle, the shot that for Max was so persuasive, occurred at the pre-cise moment that the portrait fell and wounded Agatha. An ominous coincidence, surely. But Max is beyond heeding words or omens. Everything is at stake.

MAX:

No midnight terrors faze the hunter,

At home with starving wolves that howl,

Where tempest tears the oak asunder

And drowns the hooting of the owl . . .

The scene is The Wolf’s Glen, a wild, craggy place where the moon’s ghostly light illuminates a desolate, confused landscape. There Caspar is waiting for his victim -- the dupe whose entrapment may gain for him a temporary reprieve. The hour is nearly midnight. By the time the act is over, Max, seeking to gain power, is fully in the power of his tempter.

ACT THREE

It is morning of the next day. Agatha in her bridal dress waits for Max to return:

Though unbeheld and clouded over,

The sun remains and shall prevail;

So God in heaven governs ever,

When days in dusk and twilight pale.

His eye is tender, calm and clear,

To gather all His children near . . .

Despite the calm and certitude that she expresses, Agatha is in fact fearful and anxious. She has had a strange, portentious dream, that she was a white dove, that Max shot her, that she fell and then became herself again, to discover a great malevolent bird of prey bleeding to death on the ground beside her.

Aaenchen, as usual, dismisses these supernatural portents and visions with a laugh:

Dear auntie, bless her, now in heaven,

Once saw a ghost and nearly died.

So dark the night, the hour eleven,

Her chamber door flew open wide.

In strange attire, with eyes blazing fire,

Or at least on the red side,

It crept to her bedside.

Her hands turned to ice!

(For aunties are mostly

Aghast at the ghostly.)

So mournfully it moaned!

So gruesomely it groaned!

She crossed herself twice

And then let out a yell:

Susanna! Hannabel!

So they came with a light,

And -- brace yourself --

And -- so ghastly the sight --

And -- what they found!

And -- the ghost was Nero,

That pesky hound!

The bridesmaids appear, bringing flowers for the bride. Aaenchen presents the box containing the bridal bouquet to her cousin. Agatha, already apprehensive, on edge, opens the box and cries out in horror. It contains, not a bridal bouquet, but a funeral wreath.

The scene changes to the clearing in the woods where Prince Ottokar has ordered the trial shot to take place. Max, rifle in hand, nervously waits for the order to shoot. He is aware that he has but one magic bullet left. From the opposite side, Caspar gloats. He is also aware that this last bullet is the fatal seventh. And he himself has chosen the target . . . an easy target. The white dove on the lowest branch . . .