![]() DACOCD 507 [DDD] |
Ebbe Hamerik The Travelling Mate (Rejsekammeraten) A fairy-tale opera in 4 acts, adapted from the short story |
![]() |
| Johannes | Ole Hedegaard |
| His father | Per Johansen |
| A gravedigger | Lars Stendevad |
| 1st Bad man (body snatcher) | Hilmar Olsen |
| 2nd Bad man (body snatcher) | Per Johansen |
| The travelling companion | Lars Waage |
| The king | Erik Keiling |
| The princess | Edith Guillaume |
| An old woman | Birgit Bastian |
| A suitor | Per Johansen |
| The executioner | Per Johansen |
| 4 voices | Jørn Tell, Benni Hans Andersen, Børge Nielsen, Bent Nørgaard |
| Sønderjyllands Symfoniorkester (Danish Philharmonic Orchestra - South Jutland) | |
SYNOPSIS
In Act 1 Johannes hears the voices of good and evil by his father's death-bed and at his graveside. Johannes makes his existential choice when he spends his inheritance to buy a corpse back from a pair of body snatchers.
In Act II he meets the travelling companion. who later proves to he the dead man whose corpse he liberated, and who heals an injured woman with a miraculous salve. In return, she gives the travelling companion her axe, which he uses later on to chop off the Troll's head. From a mountain top Johannes hears the distant voice of a woman; he is drawn by it.
Act III is set at the palace; Johannes meets the king, who has just been humiliated by his daughter for begging for the life of a suitor she has decided to have hanged. The king shows Johannes the garden where the corpses of rejected suitors are hanging in the trees, and tells him this is the penalty, for guessing wrongly, what the princess is thinking about. Nevertheless. Johannes asks the princess for her hand. He is told to come back the next day. In the following scene the servants and the executioner prepare for the princess to proclaim the death sentence on Johannes. However, Johannes shocks her by, guessing what she is thinking about.
Act IV begins with a scene omitted from this recording in which the princess goes to see the troll in his mountain and learn that she is to think about the troll's head when Johannes comes the next day. The servants prepare the palace for a feast in the hope that Johannes will guess correctly again. When he is to reply, the travelling companion hands him a handkerchief. from which the troll's severed head tumbles. The princess surrenders to Johannes in a fury. Once the travelling companion has rubbed the miraculous salve on her forehead her hatred for Johannes turns to love.
Mogens Andersen