Opera in German are German-speaking countries, covering Germany, Austria, and the historic German states that precede those countries.
The German-speaking opera appeared very quickly after the birth of the opera itself in Italy. The first Italian Opera was Jacopo Peri's Dafne in 1598. In 1627, Heinrich SchÃÆ'¼tz provided music for the German translation of the same libretto. But during most of the 17th and 18th centuries, German operas will struggle to rise from the shadows of Italian-speaking rivals, with German-born composers such as Handel and Gluck choosing to work in foreign traditions such as seria opera.
Some Baroque composers, such as Reinhard Keizer, did try to challenge Italian domination, and the head of the theater Abel Seyler became an excited promoter of German opera in the 1770s, but only with the emergence of Mozart which is a serious German perennial tradition - established language operas. Mozart took the popular and simple genre of Singspiel and turned it into something much more sophisticated. Beethoven followed his example with the idealist Fidelio; and with Der FreischÃÆ'¼tz in 1821, Weber formed a unique form of German opera under the influence of Romanticism. Weber's innovation was defeated by Wagner, one of the most revolutionary and controversial figures in music history. Wagner strives to achieve his ideals as a "musical drama", eliminating all the differences between aria and recital, using a complex network of prime motifs and greatly enhancing the strength and richness of the orchestra. Wagner also drew German mythology in its large operating cycle of Der Ring des Nibelungen .
After Wagner, the opera could never be the same again, so greatly influenced. The most successful of his followers is Richard Strauss. Opera flourished in German-speaking countries in the early 20th century at the hands of such figures as Hindemith, Busoni and Weill until the pursuit of power of Adolf Hitler forced many composers into silence or exile. After the young opera writers of World War II were inspired by the example of Schoenberg and Berg who had pioneered modernist techniques such as atonality and serialism in the early decades of this century. Composers working in the field of opera today include Hans Werner Henze.
Like the names Mozart, Weber, Wagner, Richard Strauss and Berg indicate, Germany and Austria have one of the strongest opera traditions in European culture. This is also evidenced by the large number of opera houses, especially in Germany where almost every major city has its own theater for the performances of these works, as well as famous international opera events such as the Salzburg Music Festival.
Video Opera in German
Baroque Era
Birth of German Opera
The first Opera in the world was Dafne by Jacopo Peri, who appeared in Florence in 1598. Three decades later Heinrich SchÃÆ'¼tz set the same libretto in translation by poet Martin Opitz, thus creating the first ever German language. opera. The music for SchÃÆ'¼tz's Dafne is now gone and the details of the show are vague, but it is known to have been written to celebrate the marriage of Landgrave Georg II of Hessen-Darmstadt to Princess Sophia Eleonora of Saxony in Torgau in 1627. As in Italy, first opera customers in Germany and Austria are nobles and nobles, and they tend to prefer songwriters and singers from the south of the Alps. Antonio Cesti was particularly successful, giving the great operative extravaganza Il pomo d'oro to the imperial palace in Vienna in 1668. Opera in Italy will continue to exercise great power over German-speaking land throughout the Baroque and the Classical period. However, the original forms also evolved. In Nuremberg in 1644, Sigmund Staden produced a "spiritual minister", Seelewig, which depicted the Singspiel, a German opera genre in which arias alternated with oral dialogue. Seelewig is a moral allegory inspired by contemporary school drama examples and is the first German opera whose music survives.
Opera in Hamburg 1678-1738
Another important development was the establishment of the Theater am GÃÆ'¤nsemarkt in Hamburg in 1678, aimed at the local middle class who preferred opera in their own language. The new opera house opens with the appearance of Johann Theile's Der erschaffene, gefallene und aufgerichtete Mensch , based on the story of Adam and Eve. However, the theater will be dominated by the works of Reinhard Keizer, a very productive composer who wrote over a hundred operas, sixty of them for Hamburg. Initially, the works undertaken in Hamburg all religiously-themed in an attempt to fend off criticism by the Pietis church authorities that the theater was immoral, but Keiser and composer colleagues like Johann Mattheson expanded the scope of the subject matter to include history and mythology. Keizer drew on foreign opera traditions, for example he included dance after the French Lully tradition model. The recitals in his operas were always in German so the audience could follow the storyline, but from Claudius in 1703 he began entering arias in Italian which made it possible to display florid vocals. The typical Hamburg style is eclectic. Orpheus (1726) by Telemann contains arias in Italian arrangement texts drawn from the famous Handel operas as well as choruses in French to the words originally defined by Lully. Opera Hamburg may also include comic characters (Keiser Der Carneval von Venedig in 1707 making them speak in the local Lower Saxon dialect), marking a great contrast with the new style of elevated seria opera as defined by Metastasio. However, the future soon became the property of the Italian opera. The most famous German-born opera composer of the era, Handel, wrote four operas for Hamburg early in his career, but later moved to writing opera seria in Italy and England. In 1738, the Theater am GÃÆ'¤nsemarkt went bankrupt and the fate of serious opera in Germany suffered a decline over the next few decades.
Opera seria and growth Singspiel
Other eminent German composers of that time tended to follow Handel's example. This is because trials from various German countries prefer opera in Italy. In 1730, the main supporters of the opera seria, the Italian grammarian Metastasio, took up residence as an imperial poet in Vienna. Johann Adolf Hasse wrote opera in Italian for the Elector of Saxony court in Dresden. Hasse also wrote an opera for Frederick the Great court in Berlin, as did Carl Heinrich Graun. The king himself supplied libretto to Graun's Montezuma , first appearing in 1755.
Deprived of aristocratic patronage, opera in Germany is forced to look to the general public for survival. This means theater company has to tour from city to city. The Singspiel became the most popular form of German opera, especially in the hands of composer Johann Adam Hiller. 1777 Hiller's reworking of Singspiel Die verwandelten Weiber is a landmark in the history of the genre, although his most famous work is Die Jagd (1770). Abel Seyler, director of the Seyler theater company born in Switzerland, is a supporter of the German opera, commissioned opera by Hiller, Georg Anton Benda, Anton Schweitzer and other composers.
This Singspiele is a comedy mixing dialogue and oral singing, influenced by similar genres of ballad opera in Britain and opium com in France. Often have a very simple sentimental and musical plot, Singspiele is not suitable for contemporary serie operas in artistic sophistication. A milestone of the German opera was Anton Schweitzer Alceste , with libretto by Wieland, airing in 1773 in Weimar. At the end of the 18th century a composer who will change all this will emerge: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Maps Opera in German
Classic Era
Mozart Singspiele
When music moved into the Classical era at the end of the 18th century, most German-born composers still avoided writing opera in their own language. The great figure of the early classical period was Christoph Willibald von Gluck but his pioneering reform was directed at the Italian and French opera, not the German repertoire. In 1778, the Emperor Joseph II attempted to change this situation by forming the German opera group, the National Singspiel, at the Burgtheater in Vienna. The experiment was short-lived and the group was dissolved in 1783, but the previous year had produced an undoubted success with the young Mozart's "Die EntfÃÆ'¼hrung aus dem Serail". Goethe immediately recognized the quality of the piece, stating "it knocks us all to the side". In the following years commercial theaters sprang up in Vienna offering opera in German. Impresario Emanuel Schikaneder succeeds in particular with the Theater auf der Wieden in the suburbs. In 1791, he persuaded Mozart to establish one of his libretti, The Magic Flute . This proved to be unusual Singspiel . Despite the traditional cute elements remaining, Mozart added a new seriousness, especially in music to Sarastro and his pastors. Even more than Die EntfÃÆ'¼hrung , Magic Flute shows the way forward for the future German opera.
Beethoven and Fidelio
The next generation of German composers, Beethoven, captured The Magic Flute of domestic comedy and high seriousness for its sole opera, Fidelio, the story of a filial dutiful wife her husband from a political prison. The years after the French Revolution of 1789 have been some of the most tumultuous in European history. In Fidelio , Beethoven wanted to express the ideals of the Revolution: freedom, equality and fraternity. He is also inspired by contemporary French works, especially the "rescue opera" Luigi Cherubini. Beethoven was arguably not a naturally operatic composer and, although Fidelio aired in 1805, it was not until 1814 that he produced his final version. Nevertheless, Fidelio is widely regarded as a masterpiece and is one of the main works in the German repertoire.
German German Romantic Opera
Initial Romanticism
In the early years of the nineteenth century, a major cultural movement known as Romanticism began to have an influence over German composers. The Romantics showed interest in the Middle Ages as well as German folklore. The fabled collection of the Grimm Brothers and the re-discovered medieval German epic, Nibelungenlied is the ultimate source of inspiration for this movement. There is also often a search for a distinctive German identity, influenced by the new nationalism that has arisen in the wake of the Napoleonic invasion. Romanticism is well established in German literature with writers such as Tieck, Novalis, Eichendorff, and Clemens Brentano. One of Germany's most famous Romantic writers, E.T.A. Hoffmann, also a musical theorist and a composer in himself and in 1816 he produced an opera, Undine , in Berlin. Another important early Romantic Opera was Faust by Louis Spohr (also 1816). Both Hoffmann and Spohr take the basic form of Singspiel as their starting point but begin to group the individual numbers into the expanded scene. They also use "memento memories", recurring musical themes associated with characters or concepts in opera, which will pave the way for the use of Wagner's main motives.
Weber
The great breakthrough in the history of German Romantic opera was by Carl Maria von Weber, aired in Berlin on 18 June 1821. Weber hated the European-wide dominance of the Italian opera Rossini and wanted to build a unique German opera style. He turned to the folk songs of Germany and folklore for inspiration; Der FreischÃÆ'¼tz is based on the story of Gespensterbuch ("Book of Wraiths") of Apple and Laun about a sniper who made an appointment with Satan. Weber's strong point is his striking ability to evoke the atmosphere through the colors of the orchestra. From the first bar of the introduction, obviously we are in the primeval forest of Germany. The highlight of this opera is the awful scene of Wolf's Glen where the hero Max makes a deal with Satan. Der FreischÃÆ'¼tz is very popular, not only in Germany, but throughout Europe. Weber never really reached his full potential as an operatic composer because of the early death of tuberculosis and his poor choice of libretti. The German Opera primarily after the Der FreischÃÆ'¼tz , Euryanthe (1823), suffered from a very weak text and rarely staged at this time. However, Euryanthe marked another important stage in the development of serious German opera. Weber completely abolished oral dialogue, resulting in a "through-composition" work in which the distinction between recital and aria becomes blurred. The lessons will not be lost on future composers, including Richard Wagner.
Other composers of the time
Weber's most important successor in the field of Romantic operas is Heinrich Marschner, who further explores Gothic and supernatural in such works as Der Vampyr (1828) and Hans Heiling (1833). ). On the other hand, it's with comic operas that Albert Lortzing scored his greatest success. The popularity of works such as Zar und Zimmermann continues in Germany today, although the opera Lortzing is rarely staged abroad. Although he started in Germany, Giacomo Meyerbeer is more famous for his contribution to Italy and (especially) the French opera. He combined elements of the three national styles into the great opera conception, which had an important influence on the development of German music, including Wagner's early works. Other well-known operas at that time included the Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (1849) by Otto Nicolai and Martha (1847) by Friedrich von Flotow. Then came Peter Cornelius (Derelium von Bagdad, 1858), Hermann Goetz ( Der WiderspÃÆ'¤nstigen ZÃÆ'¤hmung , 1874) and Karl Goldmark ( Die KÃÆ'Â Kemudian nigin von Saba , 1875).
Mention must be made of two great composers of the era who wrote their main work in another genre which also consists of operas: Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann. Schubert wrote over a dozen operas, mostly in the Singspiel style. Almost nothing was done during the composer's lifetime. Schumann wrote only one opera, Genoveva , first staged in Leipzig in 1850. Although praised by Liszt, it failed to win any lasting success. The verdict on these two opera composers in general is that, although they contain good music, they have too many dramatic weaknesses to be acknowledged as a masterpiece of the stage.
Wagner
Richard Wagner is one of the most revolutionary and controversial composers in music history and his innovation changed the course of opera, not only in Germany and Austria but throughout Europe. Wagner gradually developed new opera concepts as Gesamtkunstwerk ("complete artwork"), music mix, poetry, and painting. The experiment originally followed the example set by Weber ( Die Feen ) and Meyerbeer ( Rienzi ), but its most important formative influence is probably Beethoven's symphonic music. Wagner believes his career really started with Der fliegende HollÃÆ'¤nder (1843). Along with the two works that followed, TannhÃÆ'¤user and Lohengrin , this has been described as "the highlight of the German Romantic opera". But this is only the beginning of a more radical development. In his mature drama, Tristan und Isolde Die Meistersinger von NÃÆ'¼rnberg , Der Ring des Nibelungen and Parsifal , Wagner eliminating the difference between aria and recitative for the smooth flow of "endless melody". He greatly enhances the role and strength of the orchestra, creating scores with the complex web of ultimate motives; and he is ready to break the accepted musical conventions, such as the tone of voice, in his attempt to be more expressive. Wagner also brought a new philosophical dimension to the opera in his works, which is usually based on stories from Germanic or Arthur legends. Finally, Wagner built his own opera house in Bayreuth, which is exclusively dedicated to doing his own work in the style he wants.
Final Romantic Opera
After Wagner
Wagner's innovation gives great shadow to the next composer, who struggles to absorb its influence while maintaining their own individuality. One of the most successful composers of the following generations is Humperdinck, whose HÃÆ'¤nsel und Gretel (1893) still has a guaranteed place in the standard repertoire. Humperdinck goes back to folk songs and Grimm Brothers tales to get inspiration. However, although the HÃÆ'¤nsel is often seen as an ideal part of introducing opera to children, it also has a very sophisticated orchestration and greatly utilizes key motives, both signs of Wagner's influence.
Other composers of the era who tried their hand at the opera included Hugo Wolf ( Der Corregidor , 1896) and Wagner's own son Siegfried.
Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss was strongly influenced by Wagner, though his father tried otherwise. At the age of seventeen, he was not impressed by TannhÃÆ'¤user , Lohengrin and Siegfried but was completely fascinated by the other three parts of the < i>/i> and Tristan und Isolde . Although in his early years he was more popular with orchestral tone poems, Salome (1905) and Other final romantics
Other composers styled "Romantic ending", such as Franz Schreker (Der Derge Klang, 1912; Der SchatzgrÃÆ'¤ber, 1920), Alexander von Zemlinsky ( Eine florentinische TragÃÆ'Â ¶die , 1917; Der Zwerg , 1922) and Erich Korngold ( Die tote Stadt , 1920) explored an area similar to Strauss Salome Elektra . They combine Wagnerian influence, lush orchestration, strange harmony and dissonance with "decadent" material that reflects the dominance of Expressionism in the contemporary psychological art and exploration of Sigmund Freud. All three of these composers underwent persecution and eclipses under the Nazis, who condemned their work as entartete Music ("degenerate music"). Hans Pfitzner is one of the romantic end-Wagnerian endings, though the lines are more conservative. The great Opera of Palestrina (1917) makes the case for tradition and inspiration rather than musical modernism.
Operation heyday
At the end of the nineteenth century, a new form lighter than opera, operetta, became popular in Vienna. Operettas soon had interesting songs, a comic plot (and often reckless) and used an oral dialogue between "number" music. The Viennese operetta is inspired by the mode for French opera Jacques Offenbach. Der Pensionat (1860) by Franz von Suppà ©  © is generally regarded as the first important operetta in German, but by far the best known example of this genre is Die Fledermaus (1874) by Johann Strauss. Franz LehÃÆ'¡r's The Merry Widow (1905) is another big hit. Other composers working in this style include Oscar Straus and Sigmund Romberg.
Modernism: Second Vienna School
Following the example of Wagner, Richard Strauss, Zemlinsky and Schreker have pushed the traditional tone to the absolute limit. Now a new composer group appeared in Vienna that wanted to bring the music out. Operative modernism actually began in the opera of two composers of the so-called Second Vienna School, Arnold Schoenberg and his deputy Alban Berg, both proponents of atonality and later development (as Schoenberg did), dodecaphony. The early works of Musico-dramatic Schoenberg, Erwartung (1909, premiere in 1924) and Die glÃÆ'¼ckliche Hand show the heavy use of harmony and chromatic dissonance in general. Schoenberg also occasionally uses Sprechstimme, which he describes as: "Voice up and down relative to the interval shown, and all bound together with time and rhythm of music except where pause is indicated". Schoenberg intends Moses und Aron to be his masterpiece of operations, but it was not completed at the time of his death.
The two Schoenberg opera students of Alban Berg, Wozzeck and Lulu (left incomplete at the time of his death) share many of the same characteristics described above, although Berg combined a very personal interpretation of the Technique twelve Schoenberg tones with melodic portions of a more traditional nature of tonal (quite Mahlerian in character). This may partly explain why opera remains in standard repertory, despite their controversial music and plot.
1918-1945: Weimar Germany, Inter-war Austria and the Third Reich
The years after World War I, German and Austrian culture flourished despite the political turmoil around it. The Late Romantic artist still works beside the acclaimed modernists Schoenberg and Berg. Italian-born Ferruccio Busoni hijacked individual grooves, trying to blend Bach and the avant-garde, Mediterranean and German culture in his music. He never lived to finish his most significant opera Doctor Faust (1925). Paul Hindemith began his operational career with short pieces, scandals such as MÃÆ'¶rder, Hoffnung der Frauen ("Killing, Hope Women") before switching to Bach, as Busoni had done. Hindemith saw Bach's "neo-classism" as a way to curb the excesses of late Romanticism. Cardillac (1925) is his first work in this regard. Hindemith was also interested in placing contemporary life on stage in the opera (a concept called Zeitoper ), such as Ernst Krenek who Jonny spielt auf (1927) had a jazz violinist as his hero. Kurt Weill reflects life in Weimar Germany in a more political way. The most famous collaboration with Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera (1928), is a terrific box-office scandal and success.
Adolf Hitler's assumption destroys this rapidly growing stream of operas. Ironically, after the burning of the Reichstag in 1933, the center of the German government was transferred to Krolloper, the state opera house in Berlin which, under the adventurous director of Otto Klemperer, had witnessed the inaugural show of many innovative works of the 1920s. , including Hindemith Neues vom Tage . Now Hindemith responded to the arrival of the Third Reich with his main work, Mathis der Maler, the portrait of an artist who tried to survive in difficult times. It received its premiere at ZÃÆ'¼rich in 1938, as all Hindemith music performances had been banned in Germany the year before. In 1940, Hindemith left Switzerland for the United States, joining a transatlantic exodus from composers including Schoenberg, Weill, Korngold and Zemlinsky. Schreker had died in 1934, having been dismissed from his teaching post by the Nazis; Other composers, such as promising Viktor Ullmann, will perish at the death camp. Some operatic composers, including Carl Orff, Werner Egk and old Richard Strauss, remain in Germany to accommodate the new regime as best they can.
German Opera since 1945
Composer writers after World War II had to find a way to achieve the destruction caused by the Third Reich. Schoenberg and Berg's modernism proved appealing to young composers, as their works had been banned by the Nazis and free of the stain of the previous regime. Bernd Alois Zimmermann saw the example of Berg's Wozzeck for the only opera Die Soldaten (1965), and Aribert Reimann continued the tradition of expressionism with his Shakespearean Lear > (1978). Perhaps the most versatile and internationally renowned German post-war opera composer is Hans Werner Henze, who has produced a series of works combining Bergian influences with Italian composers such as Verdi. Examples of operations are Boulevard Solitude , The Bassarids (becoming libretto by W. H. Auden) and Das verratene Meer . Karlheinz Stockhausen departs in a more avant-garde direction with a large operating cycle based on seven days of the week, Licht (1977-2003). Giselher Klebe creates a broad working body in the opera genre based on literary works. Other prominent composers who still produce opera today include Wolfgang Rihm and Olga Neuwirth.
See also
- Category: opera in German
Notes and references
Common sources
- Oxford Illustrated History of Opera , ed. Roger Parker (OUP, 1994)
- Viking Opera Guide , ed. Amanda Holden (Viking, 1993)
- Opera Short History , Donald Grout (Columbia University Press, 4th ed., 2003)
- New Grove Dictionary of Opera , ed. Stanley Sadie (OUP, 1992)
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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