Word: rautendelein
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...beginning Rautendelein was just a pale, elfin creature who lived in a German wood at the bottom of a well. She was really no being at all, just a light, pagan spirit who kissed men's eyes and made them well. And as such she came to Gerhart Hauptmann who put out his fingers swiftly and caught her for a play about a village bellcaster...
Hauptmann's play begins in the forest with Rautendelein and three of her faery ilk; Nickelmann, the old man of the well, all moss and weeds and dripping; a witch whose herbs were powerless against humans, and a mischievous faun whose first prank was to push down into a lake the bell which had just been cast by a certain villager named Heinrich. This Heinrich, like his wife Magda, the schoolmaster, the barber, and the pastor, was a simple peasant. All his life he had worked on the bell to hang in the church tower-so long, so hard...
Last week La Campana Sommersa, the music by Ottorino Respighi to a libretto by Claudio Guastalla taken from Hauptmann's play, had its U. S. premiere at the Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan. Rautendelein was still its inspiration, Heinrich still the heckled human. And for it all Respighi had made lovely, lyric music. But operatic singers, operatic trappings rarely enhance a poetic mood. Soprano Elisabeth Rethberg as Rautendelein managed her bulk skillfully, sang difficult music easily, spent clear high notes' lavishly. But her appearance, her acting left little illusion. Nor could Giovanni Martinelli forget he was a tenor...
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