Not a high point in German history, 1938. I think we can all agree on that. But, for better or worse, it WAS when this opera came into the world. I'd previously seen one of Hindemith's previous operas, Cardillac (the only other one available in video form, I think), and I seem to remember thinking it was pretty good, though I never wrote about it here and forget almost everything about it. I should rewatch. Well, this is no doubt his best-known.
This opera is rather hard to summarize, but I will do my best. So it's the German Peasants' War. Ol' Mathis is a painter who doesn't really want to get involved with the conflict and also is (quelle surprise) having trouble finding inspiration to paint. When the peasant leader Schwalb and his daughter Regina show up, on the run from the nobles, he gives them shelter and helps them escape. Their pursuers find out what he did and are pissed off, but Mathis is untouchable because of his patron, the archbishop Albrecht von Brandenburg. Later, this self-same Albrecht is having money troubles; he gets a letter from Martin Luther suggesting that he convert to Protestantism and then solve his money problems by marrying Ursula, a rich guy's daughter. But ultimately he decides, no! I will embrace extreme asceticism instead (this subplot goes nowhere, but it plays such a large role in the narrative that I had to mention it). Did I mention that Mathis is in love with Ursula? Well, he is, although the libretto does almost nothing with this. Anyway, when the peasants kill a count, he yells at them and prevents them from raping the countess. Schwalb is killed and Mathis goes off with Regina. He has a long temptation sequence, where various figures out of his past appear, but it's not at all clear what he's being tempted to do or not do. He's not a martyr or part of a religious order, so it can't be a temptation in the sense of Jesus or Saint Anthony. Weird. Anyway, at the end, Albrecht appears and tells him he's gotta paint! Regina is dying, alas, seemingly from that oft-fatal condition of Being In An Opera. Mathis rejects the world and goes off to live the remainder of his life in solitude (Ursula just disappears--I cannot overstate how minimal her relationship with Mathis is). The ending of this production has him dying, but that doesn't look like it's specified by the libretto.
Jeez. As you may have gathered, it's not the most orderly plot. Hindemith wrote his own libretto; it is possible that he could have used some assistance. You must notice heavy similarities between this and Palestrina: largely plotless German operas from more or less the same time period about Renaissance religious artists who are unable to create. And my reaction was pretty similar, too: they both have good romantic music, but they're also both the operatic equivalent of eating your vegetables: They say you should do it, and you think it's probably good for you in some intangible way, but they're pretty bland and you kind of don't want to. I will allow that this has a little more going on than Pfitzner's opera, but still...Kurt Streit does stand out as Albrecht, making him a surprisingly sympathetic, human character. But otherwise, eh. In spite of all the five-star reviews on amazon, I'm not overly impressed.
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