Esther: The Lost Opera

Kirill Karabits
Pentatone 
★★★★☆
Thomas de Hartmann, who was born in 1884 in what is now (and hopefully remains) Ukraine, wrote his opera Esther in France during the 1940s. An abridged concert version was mounted in 1976, 20 years after his death. Now we can hear it complete in a vigorous performance conducted by the Ukrainian Kirill Karabits. 

This is an opera about the Hebrew Bible’s Esther, the secretly Jewish queen of Persia who saves the kingdom’s exiled Jews from being slaughtered. Hartmann’s libretto doesn’t help by sticking so fast to the heroic couplets of Jean Racine’s 1689 play, but when his eclectic music takes wing it really does fly — often into strident rage, but finally into exultation when the happy ending arrives. 

The American soprano Corinne Winters as Esther needs more theatrical flair but her zinging top notes are a joy and sharpen the music’s characteristic mix of pain and ecstasy. Her male colleagues give strong support, while Karabits and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra revel in the exotic colours and heightened passions.