Music in the Classical World by Bertil van Boer;

Author:Bertil van Boer;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

During the last decades of the century, the realization that a more viable and progressive type of German opera was needed apart from the popular Singspiel. A work with a plot drawn from a Classical Greek story, Alzeste, premiered in Weimar in May 1773. This opera, commissioned by the Seyler troupe as a model for their concept of German serious opera, was more conventional in musical style, and both the text by Christoph Martin Wieland and music by Gottfried Schweitzer received less critical acclaim. Sturm und Drang author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe noted particularly in his satire “Gods, Heroes, and Wieland” that the work failed to achieve its purpose.6 Another lengthy review by Joseph Martin Kraus in Etwas von und über Musik from 1778 was likewise ungenerous in its criticism, but the work encouraged other composers to attempt more serious works in German. Given the trends in the literature of the time, a Jesuit priest in Mannheim, Pater Anton Klein, then proposed a work based on a twelfth-century historical incident in German history. Titled Günther von Schwarzburg, it paralleled the need for national identification in the plays of the period and was intended to be composed for the famed Mannheim orchestra. Kapellmeister Ignaz Holzbauer was entrusted with the music, but concerns over the symbolism of a national German hero being betrayed by both his prince and others led to a delay in its premiere. When it finally appeared on stage on January 5, 1777, it became an instant success, prompting critics to advocate for new works in the same vein. The scoring for this opera was generous, given that the orchestra was the famed Mannheim Kapelle, but the recitatives are integrated, the arias more fully developed, and the action portions in the work depicted through instrumental interludes and dramatic choruses. While it may have seemed to use the operatic spectacle of Gluck as its model, Gluck himself was impressed enough to begin work on a similar nationalist work, Hunnenschlacht (Battle of the Huns), which remained fragmentary due to the composer’s ill health. It also encouraged composers of the Romantic Period to explore more nationalist subjects beyond the generic structure of the Singspiel, which nonetheless remained the main genre of German opera.

The Singspiel, however, was not the only original German opera genre to be created during the Classical Period. In 1774, Georg Anton Benda, a member of the talented Bohemian family and already a well-known composer of the Singspiel, created a new and distinctly German brand of theatre piece called the melodrama (or duodrama). Given the interest in Germany for spoken theatre, which often included incidental music such as entr’actes, an overture, and the occasional insertion song, aria, or chorus, it is perhaps not surprising that the concept of merging theatre and opera was considered. For both composers and actors, this was a particularly effective, if difficult subgenre, for it consisted of a spoken play with orchestral punctuations throughout the dialogue. Benda’s first effort, Ariadne auf Naxos, was premiered at the court theatre in Gotha on January 27, 1775, and became an instant success for its novelty.

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