Work
Hans Gál: Die Heilige Ente, Op. 15 (1921)
Production
Theater Heidelberg, 2023
Conductor
Dietger Holm
Performances recorded
Final two staged performances of the 2023 run
Studio sessions
Additional sessions in 2025
Forces
Philharmonisches Orchester Heidelberg; Chor und Extrachor des Theaters und Orchesters Heidelberg
Principal roles
Ipča Ramanović (Mandarin); Irina Simmes (Li); Ks. Winfrid Mikus (Kuli Yang); Theresa Immerz (Tänzerin); James Homann (Gaukler); Ks. Wilfried Staber (Bonze); João Terleira (Haushofmeister)
Hans Gál – Die Heilige Ente
Gál’s second opera was his greatest theatrical success. After its première in Düsseldorf in 1923 under Georg Szell, it was taken up immediately by further theatres and remained in the repertoire until 1933. The Heidelberg production restored the work to the stage in a fully orchestrated form for the first time since that interruption, and the recent performances have made possible a recording that can now be brought to wider attention.
The recording project has entailed an extensive live recording operation, with a large-scale microphone set-up, a substantial engineering team, two full performances and additional studio sessions, all necessary to unite the immediacy of the stage performance with the detail, balance and finish required for a lasting recorded document.
What now remains is to secure the funding needed to cover the recording project and bring it to release, so that this remarkable opera may be heard far beyond the theatre in which it has just proved itself so vividly alive.
Why this work matters
Die Heilige Ente occupies a distinctive place in Hans Gál’s oeuvre. Though often described as a comic opera, it is far more than that. Wit, satire and theatrical agility are certainly present, but they are inseparable from lyric warmth, emotional seriousness and a highly individual dramatic instinct. This is one of the central stage works of Gál’s creative life, and one of the clearest demonstrations of his ability to unite formal poise, vocal generosity and theatrical immediacy.
Its importance lies partly in that rare balance. The score never settles for surface entertainment; nor does it sacrifice lightness in pursuit of weight. Instead, humour and seriousness continually deepen one another. As the conductor Dietger Holm has observed, this is music of great radiance, abundance and variety: a richly theatrical score that draws naturally on the broader operatic tradition while speaking in a wholly personal voice.
The opera’s human centre is equally important. For all its fable-like setting, its central figures are not mere comic types. Li, Yang and the Mandarin change through the course of the work, and the music changes with them. What begins with playfulness and brilliance opens gradually into something more inward, tender and searching. That combination of theatrical vitality and genuine human depth is one of the reasons the work matters so much, and one of the reasons a recording of real quality is worth making now.