Frank Bridge - The Christmas Rose, Children's Opera (1919-29)

Chelsea Opera Group Orchestra and Chorus; Howard Williams; Wendy Eathorne; Eirian James; Maldwyn Davies; Henry Herford; David Wilson-Johnson

00:00 Frank Bridge - The Christmas Rose

00:04 Introduction
03:52 Scene 1 - Curtain Is Raised Near Bethlehem
25:44 Scene 2 - The Way To Bethlehem
35:42 Scene 3 - Before The Inn In Bethlehem At The Approach Of Dawn

A children's opera? No, not really: not at all intended for school performances, nor for professional performance to an audience of children. Instead, an adult and most beautiful exploration of a story, or a legend, about children: about two of them who followed the three shepherds on their journey to the newly-born Christ in Bethlehem.

The source of the libretto was a nativity play by Margaret Kemp-Welch and Constance Cotterall, telling how the children, Miriam and Reuben, were originally forbidden to go with the shepherds; how Miriam persuades Reuben nevertheless to follow them; how both are ashamed that they have brought no gifts for the holy child; how Miriam's tears at this bring forth roses from underneath the snow, a gift from heaven as well as from the children.

This is an innocent story, which is in the event turned into magic by Bridge's music. It seems that the score was largely sketched in 1919, and then put on one side until 1929, perhaps because a first performance at the Royal College of Music in 1931 was in the offing. This was a great loss for the listeners of the 1920's, a loss which was later extended by the opera's neglect. Until now, that is; for here on this most beautiful music, touching at every turn, is at last readily available. If Bridge himself had doubts about its quality (and putting it on one side for ten years does indeed suggest exactly that) the doubts were likely concerned with a change of musical style he was experiencing at the time. No trace of an uncertain hand, however, remains in the music, which flows with utter conviction: unfailingly skilled, unfailingly expressive.

Or so it seems in the present performance, an exceedingly good one. The two children sound entirely credible, as they enact what is of course the major part of the story; the three shepherds (one of them the father) are equally right, equally unassuming. Both groups are ready to allow an element of adult passion to enter their voices when the music demands it, without overdoing an adult vibrato; anything less than this would perhaps seem unnatural. The orchestra savours every felicity (and there are many) in the scoring, and the conductor welds the splendid vocal and instrumental contributions into an entirely convincing flow.

The overall effect is helped along by a recording of good warmth of tone, if perhaps not the last degree of presence. With luck many Christmases will be illuminated this year by the gift of this most welcome record.

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Bridge's Christmas opera spans a decade of major change for this composer. The work was largely sketched out the year after the end of the Great War. It was completed and scored by 1929 by which time his earlier 'British pastoral' style (evinced by Summer and The Sea) had given way to the tougher Bergian approach (evident from Enter Spring, String Quartet No. 3).

The bell-echoes of Enter Spring are strong in the Introduction and elsewhere. The music generally carries the stamp of George Butterworth and Bridge's own Ophelia picture - There is a Willow Grows Aslant a Brook. The music also touches the same nerves as Rutland Boughton's Bethlehem (not at all a jarring parallel) as well as various Christmas pieces by Vaughan Williams and Finzi. However it was the vocal technique in Berg's Lulu that was recalled by Scene 2.

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Artworks: Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis