Treasure or Trinket?

 When the Minnesota Opera announced it was mounting the American premiere of Reinhard Keiser’s The Fortunes of King Croesus, the reaction of even the most seasoned operagoer was likely: Who? What? Why?

All but forgotten now, Keiser was one of the shining lights of the German Baroque era. His most popular opera dramatizes the fate of King Croesus, an avaricious monarch whose hubris causes his fall at the hands of an invader, Cyrus. Entwined in this central drama is a typically muddled Baroque plot of overlapping love triangles between Croesus’ son Atis, his love, Elmira, and several other characters.

“When I first heard a recording, I was so high on this opera that I felt it needed to be done,” says Minnesota Opera artistic director Dale Johnson, addressing the Why? Johnson’s commitment has never wavered. “We tried to produce it in ’03, ’04, and ’05, but we never had the funds.” A collaboration with Britain’s Opera North finally brought the production to fruition.

In the early 1700s, many considered Keiser Germany’s greatest composer, in company that includes Handel and Telemann. How could so great a composer languish in obscurity for three centuries? Johnson’s educated guess is that “something shattering was happening at the time”—such as the advent of Italian opera seria, perfected by Handel. “Kreiser’s work was local in nature. He didn’t embrace the new international style, so his work was eclipsed.”

As a result, Kreiser’s music is, according to Johnson, “much freer and more expressive than the Italian style, which is rooted in de capo arias.” Kreiser’s shorter pieces are fast-paced and fresh compared to the rigid structure of Handel, says Johnson. He describes these pieces as “charming,” but to ears accustomed to the more complex structures of later composers, they could also be considered a bit superficial and lacking in depth of feeling. “That may be why Keiser has been lost,” Johnson says. But it doesn’t mean the man shouldn’t get heard every now and then.