Rivalled only by Der Zwerg (The Dwarf), his other one-acter based upon Oscar Wilde, Eine Florentinische Tragödie (A Florentine Tragedy) has become the most often performed of Alexander von Zemlinsky’s eight operas. Completed in 1916, when Zemlinsky had moved away from the edgier expressionism of the years before the first world war, Eine Florentinische Tragödie has a plot that could have come straight out of Italian verismo, a tale of adultery and murder set in Renaissance Italy, with a neat twist at its climax, and a suitably overheated post-Straussian score. This recording, taken from performances conducted by Marc Albrecht at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam seven years ago, is thoroughly competent, with John Lundgren a powerful presence as Simone, the cuckolded husband, and Ausrine Stundyte as his wife, Bianca, who turns to Nikolai Schukoff’s Guido for a spot of TLC. But Albrecht and the orchestra sometimes underplay the emotive power of the score; it’s the sort of work in which you can’t have too much of a good thing.
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