Rued Langgaard, Antikrist (1930)

And now, another Danish opera for Scandinavian Opera Week! Nordic Opera Week? Irrelevant: whatever kind of week it is, it's over now, 'cause I ain't got any more! So for now, enjoy this.

The first thing to say is that musically, this is just stunning. You rarely hear the like. Intensely powerful, dramatic music, reminiscent of the best of Wagner or Strauss and at least as good. Langgaard was a rare talent--basically unknown in his lifetime, apparently--and he deserves to be heard like heck.

As for the plot. Well. In addition to being a brilliant composer, Langgaard was also apparently a kind of weird, reactionary Jesus-freak type, so this his only opera is on religious themes--whether he believed in a literal forthcoming end of the world or just a figurative one, we can see his preoccupations here. It does not have a conventional plot. In the beginning, the Antichrist is summoned to walk the earth (although the character him--or her!--self never appears), and at the end, he's destroyed by God. And between the beginning and the end...other stuff happens. Maybe. It's difficult to say, really.

Aside from bits and pieces, Antikrist was never performed in Langgaard's lifetime, producers frequently rejecting the libretto as too weird. You see such complaints and the popular narrative is: grrr short-sighted producers not recognizing greatness when they see it I hate them sooooo much! And yet, I see their point. I suppose it's generally about the consequences of the Antichrist walking the earth, with the Beast and the Whore and other apocalyptic Biblical things, but most of the actual singing is more or less gibberish to me. The music is dramatically compelling as anything, but when you don't have a compelling story to go with it...well, you're only halfway there.

Just watching this with no prior knowledge, I think you would strongly suspect that it was a staged oratorio rather than an opera proper. That's what it feels like--and not one of your more plot-heavy oratorios--a Messiah, eg. But apparently Langgaard was very insistent that it was in fact an opera and should be performed as such. Well, okay, I don't mind, but I'm sorry to say, I don't think much of the only available video. Even if the story doesn't amount to much, you really ought to be able to make this visually striking. But this isn't; it's presented like a mystery play in a church, with everyone dressed up as nineteenth-century Danish peasants, I guess enacting the story, such as it is. It's really nothing much to look at, I have to say.

As I say, Langgaard's music is great. I think everyone should at least listen to this. But you don't have to feel guilty about not watching it as well.