Opera Review: Raiders of the Lost Archive

The Hungarian National Opera strikes Goldmark with The Queen of Sheba.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Queen of Sheba appeals to her lover Assad in Karl Goldmark's opera of the same title.
Photo by Péter Rakóssy for the Hungarian National Opera.

If you've been following Superconductor this week, the Hungarian National Opera's festival stand at Lincoln Center has not been a huge artistic success. That changed on Friday night with The Queen of Sheba, the 1875 chestnut by composer Karl Goldmark. Once a pillar of the repertory, the Queen held the stage in Vienna and Italy for decades and was mounted at the Metropolitan Opera in 1885. This performance of the opera (the first in New York in forty years) showed that this is a living, vibrant work well worthy of frequent revival: as long as its stringent vocal demands are met.