Carl Nielsen’s Great Comic Opera

While Nielsen is primarily known in the United States as a symphonic composer, he is also responsible for creating one of the greatest Danish operas of all time. Maskarade, composed between 1904 and 1906, is a comic opera detailing the tangle of love, misunderstandings, and drama that occurs during a masked ball. The opera is based on a 1724 play by Ludvig Holberg – writer, philosopher, historian, and one of the most important playwrights to have come out of Norway. Henry Fogel focuses on a recording of Nielsen’s Maskarade that features contralto Gurli Plesner, tenor Tonny Landy, and others.