Page 87 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2025. Glasbena interpretacija: med umetniškim in znanstvenim┊Music Interpretation: Between the Artistic and the Scientific. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 8

musical interpretation: specifics of working with textual statements ...
school practice. Against his teacher’s wishes, he performed several times in
the spring of 1914 at the theatre in Graz, where he completely fascinated the
local critics with his performances as Rodolfo in La Bohème and as Cavara-
5
dossi in Tosca. Since the Czech press had reported on the American offer
in March 1914, Kubla must have impressed audiences in Graz with the per-
formances of La Bohème on 7 and 14 February. All indications are that it
was the excellent reviews of Kubla’s interpretation, together with the rec-
ommendation of the director of the Vienna Music Academy, that attract-
ed the famous Berlin agent Norbert Salter to “check out” Kubla for himself
in the Austrian capital. And Kubla clearly impressed Salter with his perfor-
mance of an excerpt from Rodolfo’s part as well as the opening aria from
Wagner’s Lohengrin. Kubla sang throughout the war at the Viennese Volks-
oper, to which he was recruited from the barracks by the director Rainer Si-
mons. After the end of the war Kubla sang first at the New German Theatre
in Prague, then for many years he was a regular guest at the National The-
atre, and also sang on many other stages at home and abroad and recorded
many gramophone records.
In my monograph on Richard Kubla, I described in detail how he dealt
with criticism of his interpretations. A notable example is the evaluation
by the Ostrava critic Milan Balcar (1886–1954), coincidentally Kubla’s class-
mate from the Ostrava gymnasium. Balcar had unsuccessfully pursued a
career as a composer, and Kubla responded to his critiques by pointing out
Balcar’s own lack of musicality. Over time, Balcar’s critiques became in-
creasingly harsh, and unlike other critics he was unable to write a pure-
ly positive review; he always felt compelled to provoke with some minor
remark.
Let’s go back in time to the performance that took place at the Os-
trava theatre on Tuesday 8 September 1931. It was Antonín Dvořák’s op-
era Rusalka, about which Balcar wrote a day later a review (published on 10
September):

Regarding Mr. Kubla as the Prince, it must be said as a matter of princi-
ple: guests should only be invited when they offer more than the home
singers. This principle was not observed in this instance. And if anyone
needed a confirmation of the opinion I expressed about Mr. Kubla’s per-
formance in Smetana’s The Bartered Bride [19 May, 1931], namely that
‘lyrical tenderness and passionate emotionality are not, and have not
been, Kubla’s strongest qualities’, then Tuesday’s Prince unfortunately
5 Ibid., 131–8.

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