Review

This remarkable recording of Denmark’s beloved “national opera” is a superlative tribute marking the 150th anniversary of the birth of composer Carl Nielsen (1865-1931). Nielsen’s second opera, Maskarade, received its Copenhagen premiere in 1906, at a time when the composer was employed as a second violinist in the Royal Danish Theatre. Quite unlike the dramatic symphonies of his maturity, this is music of lightness and charm, immediately accessible and immensely enjoyable. The opera’s contrived comedy of mistaken identities serves as mere scaffolding for a libretto that revels in a peculiarly Danish sense of the absurd. Niels Jørgen Riis plays Leander, forced into a marriage with Leonora (Dénise Beck) by his buffoonish father Jeronimus (Stephen Milling). He eventually comes to realize during the celebrations at the masked ball that the disguised woman he truly desires is Leonora herself. Johann Reuter plays Leander’s servant Henrik, who also has his eye on Leonora’s servant, Pernille (Ditte Højgaard Andersen).

The conductor Michael Schønwandt is a magisterial proponent of the score, a work he committed to memory at the age of ten. The studio-quality SACD recording is greatly enhanced by the superb acoustics of the new Danish Royal Koncerthuset. The orchestra, chorus and the cast drawn from the Royal Danish Opera are uniformly excellent throughout. A full libretto is provided; the English translation is identical to that of the newly edited score provided by the Carl Nielsen Project of the Music Department of the Royal Danish Library, freely available as a PDF download at bit.ly/1X2vvUO courtesy of the Danish Centre for Music Publication.