STEPHAN Die ersten Menschen • Karl Anton Rickenbacher, cond; Siegmund Nimsgern (Adahm); Gabriele Maria Ronge (Chawa); Florian Cerny (Kajin); Hans Aschenbach (Chabel); Berlin RSO • cpo 999 980 (2 CDs: 111:58 &) Live: Berlin 1998

When music-lovers speak about composers whose lives ended too early, the name Rudi Stephan rarely comes up. Perhaps that is because his life ended so early and so damned senselessly (he was killed in World War I at the age of 28) that his work is virtually unknown. If this opera is an indication, we lost a great one.

Die ersten Menschen (translated here as “The First Humans”) was the last major work Stephan produced before going off to war and to his death, shot in the head by a Russian soldier in the trenches. Austrian dramatist Karl Kraus called World War I Die letzten Tage der Menschheit (“The Last Days of Mankind”), first publishing his satirical play by that name in 1918—though he kept modifying it for another four years. By that time, Stephan was already dead—killed in 1915. One cannot help noting the irony of the two titles when juxtaposed against each other.

Stephan’s opera takes as its starting point the life of Adam and Eve (Eve, here, is Chawa) and their children. The opera is based on Otto Borngräber’s erotic mystery play of the same name—a controversial work banned in Bavaria after its first Munich performance in 1912. The Adam-Eve-Cain-Abel story serves as the basis of philosophical, erotic, and religious musings by the playwright and then the composer; the possibility of an incestuous relationship between Eve and Abel is raised, at least as a suspicion in the mind of Cain, and given as the reason for Cain’s killing of his brother. The drama explores the internal family relationships, vastly differing attitudes about life and religion, and the full breadth and depth of human feelings. There are only four characters in the opera (those listed in the headnote)—no chorus, no minor characters to distract us from the main ideas.

Stephan’s musical language is what I would describe as post-Straussian expressionistic. It is definitely a work of the 20th century, but its roots are in tonality. If you respond to a work like Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle, this opera is likely to resonate with you. The music’s dramatic sweep is intense and impressive, and there is no telling what Stephan might have achieved had he lived a normal life. One should not, however, assume that one listens here for potential, for fragments of a strong work that would have come together had he lived. Taken entirely on its own merits, this is an extremely strong work, one that moves the listener deeply and engages fully. It is true that 10 years later, he might have edited it and tightened it just a bit, but in truth, it moves along quite well and is intelligently shaped. I had no idea what to expect when I began listening to this, and I found it impossible to turn it off until it was over. This is a score of power, genuine beauty, and emotional impact—music that I believe will stay in the memory after one has heard and absorbed it.

Stephan’s contemporaries warned him that the controversial nature of the play would make the work difficult to produce, and indeed the scheduled premiere at Frankfurt was postponed because during wartime this was seen as unnecessarily confrontational with society’s norms. The result is that the opera was not produced during Stephan’s life, and was first performed in Frankfurt am Main in 1920. For many years, the work was performed, if at all, in a revised version that “purged” some of its most dramatically offensive (and therefore central to the work) material. This recording is from a series of 1998 unstaged performances in the Berlin Konzerthaus based on Stephan’s original version, though with a few small cuts.

The performance is first-rate. The singers are for the most part vocally strong and fully engaged in the drama (tenor Aschenbach shows occasional strain), and Rickenbacher shapes the score very well. The recording is clear and well balanced, suffering not at all for being a live performance. The accompanying essays are informative and very helpful, and a German-English libretto is included as well. This is an extremely important release, and a candidate for my year-end Want List.

FANFARE: Henry Fogel