German opera
Encyclopedia
Opera in German is the opera
of the German-speaking countries
, most notably Germany (or the historic states which now form the Federal Republic of Germany) and Austria. This article focuses on opera in the German language
, with brief mentions of German or Austrian composers who wrote opera primarily in other languages, as well as non-native composers who wrote operas in German (such as the Italian Ferruccio Busoni
).
German-language opera appeared remarkably quickly after the birth of opera itself in Italy. The first Italian opera was Jacopo Peri
's Dafne of 1598. In 1627, Heinrich Schütz
provided the music for a German translation of the same libretto
. Yet during much of the 17th and 18th centuries German-language opera would struggle to emerge from the shadow of its Italian-language rival, with leading German-born composers such as Handel
and Gluck opting to work in foreign traditions such as opera seria
. Some Baroque composers, such as Reinhard Keiser
, did try to challenge Italian dominance, but it was only with the appearance of Mozart that a lasting tradition of serious German-language opera was established. Mozart took the simple, popular genre of Singspiel and turned it into something far more sophisticated. Beethoven followed his example with the idealistic Fidelio
; and with Der Freischütz
of 1821, Weber
established a uniquely German form of opera under the influence of Romanticism
. Weber's innovations were eclipsed by those of Richard Wagner
, one of the most revolutionary and controversial figures in musical history. Wagner strove to achieve his ideal of opera as "music drama", eliminating all distinction between aria
and recitative
, employing a complex web of leitmotif
s and vastly increasing the power and richness of the orchestra. Wagner also drew on Germanic mythology
in his huge operatic cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen
. After Wagner, opera could never be the same again, so great was his influence. The most successful of his followers was Richard Strauss
. Opera flourished in German-speaking lands in the early 20th century in the hands of figures such as Hindemith, Busoni and Kurt Weill
until Adolf Hitler
's seizure of power forced many composers into silence or exile. After World War II young opera writers were inspired by the example of Schoenberg
and Berg
who had pioneered modernist
techniques such as atonality
and serialism
in the earlier decades of the century. Composers at work in the field of opera today include Hans Werner Henze
and Karlheinz Stockhausen
.
As the names of Mozart, Weber, Wagner, Richard Strauss and Berg indicate, Germany and Austria have one of the strongest operatic traditions in European culture. This is also evidenced by the large number of opera houses, particularly in Germany where almost every major city has its own theatre for staging such works, as well as internationally renowned operatic events such as the Salzburg Music Festival.
The world's first opera was Dafne by Jacopo Peri
, which appeared in Florence
in 1598. Three decades later Heinrich Schütz
set the same libretto in a translation by the poet Martin Opitz, thus creating the first ever German-language opera. The music to Schütz's Dafne is now lost and details of the performance are sketchy, 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, the first patrons of opera in Germany and Austria were royalty and the nobility, and they tended to favour composers and singers from south of the Alps. Antonio Cesti
was particularly successful, providing the huge operatic extravaganza Il pomo d'oro
for the imperial court in Vienna
in 1668. Opera in Italian would continue to exercise a considerable sway over German-speaking lands throughout the Baroque and Classical periods. Nevertheless, native forms were developing too. In Nuremberg
in 1644, Sigmund Staden
produced the "spiritual pastorale", Seelewig
, which foreshadows the Singspiel
, a genre of German-language opera in which arias alternate with spoken dialogue. Seelewig was a moral allegory inspired by the example of contemporary school dramas and is the first German opera whose music has survived.
in 1678, aimed at the local middle classes who preferred opera in their own language. The new opera house opened with a performance of Johann Theile
's Der erschaffene, gefallene und aufgerichtete Mensch, based on the story of Adam and Eve
. The theatre, however, would come to be dominated by the works of Reinhard Keiser
, an enormously prolific composer who wrote over a hundred operas, sixty of them for Hamburg. Initially, the works performed in Hamburg had all been on religious themes in an attempt to ward off criticisms by Pietist
church authorities that the theatre was immoral, but Keiser and fellow composers such as Johann Mattheson
broadened the range of subject matter to include the historical and the mythological. Keiser drew on foreign operatic traditions, for instance he included dances after the model of the French tradition of Lully
. The recitative
in his operas was always in German so the audience could follow the plot, but from Claudius in 1703 he began to include arias in Italian which allowed for florid vocal display. The hallmark of the Hamburg style was its eclecticism. Orpheus
(1726) by Telemann contains arias in Italian setting texts taken from famous Handel
operas as well as choruses in French to words originally set by Lully. Hamburg opera might also include comic characters (Keiser's Der Carneval von Venedig of 1707 has them speaking in the local Lower Saxon dialect), marking a great contrast to the elevated new style of opera seria
as defined by Metastasio
. Yet the immediate future belonged to Italian opera. The most famous German-born opera composer of the era, Handel
, wrote four operas for Hamburg at the beginning of his career but soon moved on to write opera seria in Italy and England. In 1738, the Theater am Gänsemarkt went bankrupt and the fortunes of serious opera in German went into decline for the next few decades.
, took up residence as the imperial poet in Vienna. Johann Adolf Hasse wrote operas in Italian for the court of the Elector of Saxony
in Dresden
. Hasse also wrote operas for the court of Frederick the Great in Berlin, as did Carl Heinrich Graun
. The king himself supplied the libretto for Graun's Montezuma
, first performed in 1755.
Deprived of aristocratic patronage, opera in German was forced to look to the general public to survive. This meant theatrical companies had to tour from town to town. The Singspiel
became the most popular form of German opera, especially in the hands of the composer Johann Adam Hiller. Hiller's 1766 reworking of the Singspiel Die verwandelten Weiber was a landmark in the history of the genre, although his most famous work would be Die Jagd
(1770). These Singspiele were comedies mixing spoken dialogue and singing, influenced by the similar genres of the ballad opera
in England and the opéra comique
in France. Often having sentimental plots and extremely simple music, Singspiele were no match for contemporary opera serias in artistic sophistication. Yet at the end of the 18th century a composer would emerge who would change all this: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
.
As music moved into the Classical era in the late 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 reforms were directed at Italian and French opera, not the German repertoire. In 1778, Emperor Joseph II attempted to change this state of affairs by establishing a German-language opera troupe, the National Singspiel, at the Burgtheater
in Vienna. The experiment was short-lived and the troupe was dissolved in 1783, yet the previous year it had produced one undoubted success with Die Entführung aus dem Serail
by the young Mozart. Goethe immediately recognised the quality of the piece, declaring "it knocked us all sideways". In the following years commercial theatres sprang up in Vienna offering German-language opera. The impresario Emanuel Schikaneder
had particular success with his Theater auf der Wieden
on the outskirts of the city. In 1791, he persuaded Mozart to set one of his libretti, The Magic Flute
. This proved to be no ordinary Singspiel. Though the traditional farcical elements remained, Mozart added a new seriousness, particularly in the music for Sarastro and his priests. Even more than Die Entführung, the Magic Flute pointed the way forward for future German opera.
, the story of a devoted wife who saves her husband from political imprisonment. The years following the French Revolution
of 1789 had been some of the most turbulent in European history. In Fidelio, Beethoven wanted to express the ideals of that Revolution: liberty, equality and fraternity. He was also inspired by contemporary French works, particularly the "rescue operas" of Luigi Cherubini
. Beethoven was arguably not a natural composer of opera and, although Fidelio was premiered in 1805, it was not until 1814 that he produced its final version. Nevertheless, Fidelio is widely regarded as a masterpiece and is one of the key works in the German repertoire.
began to exert an influence over German composers. The Romantics showed a keen interest in the Middle Ages
as well as German folklore. The fairy tale collections of the Brothers Grimm
and the rediscovered Medieval German epic the Nibelungenlied
were major sources of inspiration for the movement. There was also often a quest for a distinctively German identity, influenced by the new nationalism
which had arisen in the wake of the Napoleonic invasions. Romanticism was already firmly established in German literature with writers such as Tieck
, Novalis
, Eichendorff and Clemens Brentano. One of the most famous German Romantic authors, E.T.A. Hoffmann
, was also a music theorist and a composer in his own right 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 took the basic form of the Singspiel as their starting point but began to group the individual numbers into extended scenes. They also employed "reminiscence motifs", recurring musical themes associated with characters or concepts in the opera, which would pave the way for Wagner's
use of the leitmotif
.
The major breakthrough in the history of German Romantic opera was Der Freischütz
by Carl Maria von Weber
, premiered in Berlin on June 18, 1821. Weber resented the Europe-wide dominance of the Italian operas of Rossini and wanted to establish a uniquely German style of opera. He turned to German folk songs and folklore for inspiration; Der Freischütz is based on a tale from the Gespensterbuch ("Book of Wraiths") of Apel and Laun concerning a marksman who makes a pact with the Devil. Weber's strong point was his striking ability to evoke atmosphere through orchestral colour. From the very first bars of the overture, it is obvious we are in the primeval forests of Germany. The highlight of the opera is the chilling Wolf's Glen Scene in which the hero Max makes his deal with the Devil. Der Freischütz was immensely popular, not only in Germany, but throughout Europe. Weber never really achieved his full potential as an opera composer due to his early death from tuberculosis and his poor choice of libretti. His major German opera after Der Freischütz, Euryanthe
(1823), suffers from a particularly weak text and is rarely staged nowadays. Yet Euryanthe marks another important stage in the development of serious German opera. Weber completely eliminated spoken dialogue, producing a "through-composed" work where the distinction between recitative and aria is becoming blurred. Its lessons would not be lost on future composers, most notably Richard Wagner
.
, who further explored the Gothic
and the supernatural in works such as Der Vampyr
(1828) and Hans Heiling
(1833). On the other hand, it was with comic opera that Albert Lortzing
scored his biggest successes. The popularity of pieces such as Zar und Zimmermann
continues in Germany today, though Lortzing's operas are rarely staged abroad. Though he began in Germany, Giacomo Meyerbeer
was more famous for his contributions to Italian and (especially) French opera. He fused elements from all three national styles into his conception of grand opera
, which had an important influence on the development of German music, including Wagner's early works. Other notable operas of the time include Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (1849) by Otto Nicolai and Martha
(1847) by Friedrich von Flotow
. Later came Peter Cornelius
(Der Barbier von Bagdad
, 1858), Hermann Goetz
(Der Widerspänstigen Zähmung
, 1874) and Karl Goldmark
(Die Königin von Saba
, 1875).
Mention should be made of two great composers of the era who wrote their major works in other genres yet also composed operas: Franz Schubert
and Robert Schumann
. Schubert wrote over a dozen operas, mostly in the Singspiel style. Hardly any were performed during the composer's lifetime. Schumann only wrote one opera, Genoveva
, first staged in Leipzig
in 1850. Though praised by Liszt
, it failed to win lasting success. The verdict on both these composer's operas has generally been that, though they contain excellent music, they have too many dramatic weaknesses to be acclaimed as great stage works.
Richard Wagner
was one of the most revolutionary and controversial composers in musical history and his innovations changed the course of opera, not just in Germany and Austria but throughout Europe. Wagner gradually evolved a new concept of opera as a Gesamtkunstwerk (a "complete work of art"), a fusion of music, poetry and painting. His earliest experiments followed the examples set by Weber
(Die Feen
) and Meyerbeer (Rienzi
), but his most important formative influence was probably the symphonic
music of Beethoven. Wagner believed his career truly began with Der fliegende Holländer (1843). Together with the two works which followed, Tannhäuser
and Lohengrin
, this has been described as the "zenith of German Romantic opera". Yet these were merely a prelude to even more radical developments. In his mature dramas, Tristan und Isolde
, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
, Der Ring des Nibelungen
and Parsifal
, Wagner abolished the distinction between aria and recitative in favour of a seamless flow of "endless melody". He greatly increased the role and power of the orchestra, creating scores with a complex web of leitmotif
s; and he was prepared to violate accepted musical conventions, such as tonality
, in his quest for greater expressivity. Wagner also brought a new philosophical dimension to opera in his works, which were usually based on stories from Germanic
or Arthurian legend. Finally, Wagner built his own opera house at Bayreuth, exclusively dedicated to performing his own works in the style he wanted.
, whose Hänsel und Gretel (1893) still has an assured place in the standard repertoire. Humperdinck turned back to folk song and the tales of the Brothers Grimm
for inspiration. Yet, though Hänsel is often viewed as the ideal piece for introducing opera to children, it also has extraordinarily sophisticated orchestration and makes great use of leitmotifs, both tell-tale signs of Wagner's influence.
Other composers of the era who tried their hand at opera include Hugo Wolf
(Der Corregidor
, 1896) and Wagner's own son Siegfried
.
Richard Strauss
was heavily influenced by Wagner, despite his father's efforts to the contrary. By seventeen, he was unimpressed with Tannhäuser
, Lohengrin
and Siegfried
but absolutely entranced by the other three pieces of the Ring
and Tristan und Isolde
. Although in his early years he was more famous for his orchestral tone poems, Salome
(1905) and Elektra
(1907) quickly established his reputation as Germany's leading opera composer. These two operas stretched the tonal music system to its breaking point. The highly chromatic music featured harsh dissonances and unresolved harmonies. This, paired with the gruesome subject matter, looked forward to expressionism
. Elektra also marked the beginning of Strauss's working relationship with the leading Austrian poet and playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal
, who would provide another five libretti for the composer. With Der Rosenkavalier
of 1910, Strauss changed direction, looking towards Mozart and the world of the Viennese waltz
as much as towards Wagner. Modernist critics accused him of "selling out", but Rosenkavalier proved an immense success with audiences around the world. Strauss continued to ignore critical fashion, producing the mixture of farce and high tragedy of Ariadne auf Naxos
, the complex allegory of Die Frau ohne Schatten
, the domestic dramas of Intermezzo
and Arabella
, and the mythological Die ägyptische Helena
and Daphne
. Strauss bid farewell to the musical stage with Capriccio
of 1942, a "conversation piece" which explores the relationship between words and music in opera.
(Der ferne Klang
, 1912; Der Schatzgräber
, 1920), Alexander von Zemlinsky
(Eine florentinische Tragödie
, 1917; Der Zwerg
, 1922) and Erich Korngold (Die tote Stadt
, 1920) explored similar territory to Strauss's Salome and Elektra. They combined Wagnerian influences, lush orchestration, strange harmonies and dissonances with "decadent
" subject matter reflecting the dominance of Expressionism
in the arts and the contemporary psychological explorations of Sigmund Freud
. All three composers suffered persecution and eclipse under the Nazis, who condemned their works as entartete Musik ("degenerate music"). Hans Pfitzner
was another late Romantic post-Wagnerian, albeit of a more conservative stripe. His major opera Palestrina
(1917) makes the case for tradition and inspiration rather than musical modernism.
, became popular in Vienna
. Operettas had immediately attractive tunes, comic (and often frivolous) plots and used spoken dialogue between the musical "numbers". Viennese operetta was inspired by the fashion for the French operettas of Jacques Offenbach
. Der Pensionat (1860) by Franz von Suppé
is generally regarded as the first important operetta in the German language, but by far the most famous example of the genre is Die Fledermaus
(1874) by Johann Strauss
. Franz Lehár
's The Merry Widow
(1905) was another massive hit. Other composers who worked in this style include Oscar Straus
and Sigmund Romberg
.
truly began in the operas of two composers of the so-called Second Viennese School
, Arnold Schoenberg
and his acolyte Alban Berg
, both advocates of atonality
and its later development (as worked out by Schoenberg), dodecaphony. Schoenberg's early musico-dramatic works, Erwartung
(1909, premiered in 1924) and Die glückliche Hand
display heavy use of chromatic harmony and dissonance in general. Schoenberg also occasionally used Sprechstimme, which he described as: "The voice rising and falling relative to the indicated intervals, and everything being bound together with the time and rhythm of the music except where a pause is indicated". Schoenberg intended Moses und Aron
as his operatic masterpiece, but it was left unfinished at his death.
The two operas of Schoenberg's pupil Alban Berg, Wozzeck
and Lulu
(left incomplete at his death) share many of the same characteristics described above, though Berg combined his highly personal interpretation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique with melodic passages of a more traditionally tonal nature (quite Mahlerian in character). This perhaps partially explains why his operas have remained in standard repertory, despite their controversial music and plots.
ploughed an individual furrow, attempting to fuse Bach
and the avant-garde, Mediterranean and Germanic culture in his music. He never lived to finish his most significant opera Doktor Faust
(1925). Paul Hindemith
began his operatic career with short, scandalous pieces such as Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen
("Murder, Hope of Women") before turning to Bach, as Busoni had done. Hindemith saw Bach-inspired "neo-classicism" as a way of curbing the excesses of late Romanticism. Cardillac
(1925) was his first work in this vein. Hindemith was also interested in putting contemporary life on the stage in his operas (a concept called Zeitoper), as was Ernst Krenek
whose Jonny spielt auf
(1927) has a jazz violinist as its hero. Kurt Weill
reflected life in Weimar Germany
in a more overtly political way. His most famous collaboration with Bertolt Brecht
, The Threepenny Opera
(1928), was both a scandal and an immense box-office success.
Adolf Hitler
's assumption of power destroyed this thriving operatic scene. Ironically, after the burning of the Reichstag
in 1933, the German seat of the government was moved to the Krolloper
, the state opera house in Berlin which, under the adventurous directorship of Otto Klemperer
, had seen the premieres of many innovative works of the 1920s, including Hindemith's Neues vom Tage
. Now Hindemith responded to the advent of the Third Reich with his chief work Mathis der Maler, a portrait of an artist trying to survive in hostile times. It received its premiere in Zürich
in 1938, since all performances of Hindemith's music had been banned in Germany the previous year. In 1940, Hindemith left Switzerland for the United States, joining a transatlantic exodus of composers which included Schoenberg, Weill, Korngold and Zemlinsky. Schreker had died in 1934, having been dismissed from his teaching post by the Nazis; other composers, such as the promising Viktor Ullmann
, would perish in the death camps. Some opera composers, including Carl Orff
, Werner Egk
and the ageing Richard Strauss, remained in Germany to accommodate with the new regime as best they could.
looked to the example of Berg's Wozzeck
for his only opera Die Soldaten
(1965), and Aribert Reimann
continued the tradition of expressionism with his Shakespearean Lear
(1978). Perhaps the most versatile and internationally famous post-war German opera composer is Hans Werner Henze
, who has produced a series of works which mix Bergian influences with those of Italian composers such as Verdi. Examples of his operas are Boulevard Solitude
, The Bassarids
(to a libretto by W. H. Auden
) and Das verratene Meer
. Karlheinz Stockhausen
set off in an even more avant-garde direction with his enormous operatic cycle based on the seven days of the week, Licht
(1977–). Giselher Klebe
created an extensive body of work in the operatic genre based on literary
works. Other leading composers still producing operas today include Wolfgang Rihm
and Olga Neuwirth
.
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
of the German-speaking countries
German-speaking Europe
The German language is spoken in a number of countries and territories in West, Central and Eastern Europe...
, most notably Germany (or the historic states which now form the Federal Republic of Germany) and Austria. This article focuses on opera in the German language
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, with brief mentions of German or Austrian composers who wrote opera primarily in other languages, as well as non-native composers who wrote operas in German (such as the Italian Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor.-Biography:...
).
Jacopo Peri
Jacopo Peri was an Italian composer and singer of the transitional period between the Renaissance and Baroque styles, and is often called the inventor of opera...
's Dafne of 1598. In 1627, Heinrich Schütz
Heinrich Schütz
Heinrich Schütz was a German composer and organist, generally regarded as the most important German composer before Johann Sebastian Bach and often considered to be one of the most important composers of the 17th century along with Claudio Monteverdi...
provided the music for a German translation of the same libretto
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
. Yet during much of the 17th and 18th centuries German-language opera would struggle to emerge from the shadow of its Italian-language rival, with leading German-born composers such as Handel
HANDEL
HANDEL was the code-name for the UK's National Attack Warning System in the Cold War. It consisted of a small console consisting of two microphones, lights and gauges. The reason behind this was to provide a back-up if anything failed....
and Gluck opting to work in foreign traditions such as opera seria
Opera seria
Opera seria is an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1710s to c. 1770...
. Some Baroque composers, such as Reinhard Keiser
Reinhard Keiser
Reinhard Keiser was a popular German opera composer based in Hamburg. He wrote over a hundred operas, and in 1745 Johann Adolph Scheibe considered him an equal to Johann Kuhnau, George Frideric Handel and Georg Philipp Telemann , but his work was largely forgotten for many...
, did try to challenge Italian dominance, but it was only with the appearance of Mozart that a lasting tradition of serious German-language opera was established. Mozart took the simple, popular genre of Singspiel and turned it into something far more sophisticated. Beethoven followed his example with the idealistic Fidelio
Fidelio
Fidelio is a German opera in two acts by Ludwig van Beethoven. It is Beethoven's only opera. The German libretto is by Joseph Sonnleithner from the French of Jean-Nicolas Bouilly which had been used for the 1798 opera Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal by Pierre Gaveaux, and for the 1804 opera Leonora...
; and with Der Freischütz
Der Freischütz
Der Freischütz is an opera in three acts by Carl Maria von Weber with a libretto by Friedrich Kind. It premiered on 18 June 1821 at the Schauspielhaus Berlin...
of 1821, Weber
Carl Maria von Weber
Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber was a German composer, conductor, pianist, guitarist and critic, one of the first significant composers of the Romantic school....
established a uniquely German form of opera under the influence of Romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
. Weber's innovations were eclipsed by those of Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
, one of the most revolutionary and controversial figures in musical history. Wagner strove to achieve his ideal of opera as "music drama", eliminating all distinction between aria
Aria
An aria in music was originally any expressive melody, usually, but not always, performed by a singer. The term is now used almost exclusively to describe a self-contained piece for one voice usually with orchestral accompaniment...
and recitative
Recitative
Recitative , also known by its Italian name "recitativo" , is a style of delivery in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms of ordinary speech...
, employing a complex web of leitmotif
Leitmotif
A leitmotif , sometimes written leit-motif, is a musical term , referring to a recurring theme, associated with a particular person, place, or idea. It is closely related to the musical idea of idée fixe...
s and vastly increasing the power and richness of the orchestra. Wagner also drew on Germanic mythology
Germanic mythology
Germanic mythology is a comprehensive term for myths associated with historical Germanic paganism, including Norse mythology, Anglo-Saxon mythology, Continental Germanic mythology, and other versions of the mythologies of the Germanic peoples...
in his huge operatic cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen is a cycle of four epic operas by the German composer Richard Wagner . The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied...
. After Wagner, opera could never be the same again, so great was his influence. The most successful of his followers was Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
. Opera flourished in German-speaking lands in the early 20th century in the hands of figures such as Hindemith, Busoni and Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...
until Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
's seizure of power forced many composers into silence or exile. After World War II young opera writers were inspired by the example of Schoenberg
Schoenberg
Schoenberg is the surname of several persons:* Arnold Schoenberg , Austrian-American composer* Claude-Michel Schoenberg , French record producer, actor, singer, popular songwriter, and musical theatre composer...
and Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...
who had pioneered modernist
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
techniques such as atonality
Atonality
Atonality in its broadest sense describes music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality in this sense usually describes compositions written from about 1908 to the present day where a hierarchy of pitches focusing on a single, central tone is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale...
and serialism
Serialism
In music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...
in the earlier decades of the century. Composers at work in the field of opera today include Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze is a German composer of prodigious output best known for "his consistent cultivation of music for the theatre throughout his life"...
and Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
.
As the names of Mozart, Weber, Wagner, Richard Strauss and Berg indicate, Germany and Austria have one of the strongest operatic traditions in European culture. This is also evidenced by the large number of opera houses, particularly in Germany where almost every major city has its own theatre for staging such works, as well as internationally renowned operatic events such as the Salzburg Music Festival.
The birth of German opera
Jacopo Peri
Jacopo Peri was an Italian composer and singer of the transitional period between the Renaissance and Baroque styles, and is often called the inventor of opera...
, which appeared in Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
in 1598. Three decades later Heinrich Schütz
Heinrich Schütz
Heinrich Schütz was a German composer and organist, generally regarded as the most important German composer before Johann Sebastian Bach and often considered to be one of the most important composers of the 17th century along with Claudio Monteverdi...
set the same libretto in a translation by the poet Martin Opitz, thus creating the first ever German-language opera. The music to Schütz's Dafne is now lost and details of the performance are sketchy, but it is known to have been written to celebrate the marriage of Landgrave Georg II of Hessen-Darmstadt
Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt
The Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt was a member state of the Holy Roman Empire. It was formed in 1567 following the division of the Landgraviate of Hesse between the four sons of Philip I, the last Landgrave of Hesse....
to Princess Sophia Eleonora of Saxony
Saxony
The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....
in Torgau
Torgau
Torgau is a town on the banks of the Elbe in northwestern Saxony, Germany. It is the capital of the district Nordsachsen.Outside Germany, the town is most well known as the place where during the Second World War, United States Army forces coming from the west met with forces of the Soviet Union...
in 1627. As in Italy, the first patrons of opera in Germany and Austria were royalty and the nobility, and they tended to favour composers and singers from south of the Alps. Antonio Cesti
Antonio Cesti
Antonio Cesti , known today primarily as an Italian composer of the Baroque era, he was also a singer , and organist. He was "the most celebrated Italian musician of his generation".- Biography :...
was particularly successful, providing the huge operatic extravaganza Il pomo d'oro
Il pomo d'oro
Il pomo d'oro is an opera in a prologue and five acts by the Italian composer Antonio Cesti with a libretto by Francesco Sbarra . It was first performed before the imperial court in a specially constructed open-air theatre Vienna in 1668...
for the imperial court in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
in 1668. Opera in Italian would continue to exercise a considerable sway over German-speaking lands throughout the Baroque and Classical periods. Nevertheless, native forms were developing too. In Nuremberg
Nuremberg
Nuremberg[p] is a city in the German state of Bavaria, in the administrative region of Middle Franconia. Situated on the Pegnitz river and the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal, it is located about north of Munich and is Franconia's largest city. The population is 505,664...
in 1644, Sigmund Staden
Sigmund Theophil Staden
Sigmund Theophil Staden was an important early German composer.Staden was born in Kulmbach, son of Johann Staden, the founder of the so-called Nuremberg school...
produced the "spiritual pastorale", Seelewig
Seelewig
Seelewig or Das geistliche Waldgedicht oder Freudenspiel genant Seelewig is an opera in a prologue, three acts and an epilogue by the German composer Sigmund Theophil Staden....
, which foreshadows the Singspiel
Singspiel
A Singspiel is a form of German-language music drama, now regarded as a genre of opera...
, a genre of German-language opera in which arias alternate with spoken dialogue. Seelewig was a moral allegory inspired by the example of contemporary school dramas and is the first German opera whose music has survived.
Opera in Hamburg 1678–1738
Another important development was the founding of the Theater am Gänsemarkt in HamburgHamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
in 1678, aimed at the local middle classes who preferred opera in their own language. The new opera house opened with a performance of Johann Theile
Johann Theile
Johann Theile was a German composer of the Baroque era, famous for the opera Adam und Eva, Der erschaffene, gefallene und aufgerichtete Mensch, first performed in Hamburg on January 2, 1678.- Life :...
's Der erschaffene, gefallene und aufgerichtete Mensch, based on the story of Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve were, according to the Genesis creation narratives, the first human couple to inhabit Earth, created by YHWH, the God of the ancient Hebrews...
. The theatre, however, would come to be dominated by the works of Reinhard Keiser
Reinhard Keiser
Reinhard Keiser was a popular German opera composer based in Hamburg. He wrote over a hundred operas, and in 1745 Johann Adolph Scheibe considered him an equal to Johann Kuhnau, George Frideric Handel and Georg Philipp Telemann , but his work was largely forgotten for many...
, an enormously prolific composer who wrote over a hundred operas, sixty of them for Hamburg. Initially, the works performed in Hamburg had all been on religious themes in an attempt to ward off criticisms by Pietist
Pietism
Pietism was a movement within Lutheranism, lasting from the late 17th century to the mid-18th century and later. It proved to be very influential throughout Protestantism and Anabaptism, inspiring not only Anglican priest John Wesley to begin the Methodist movement, but also Alexander Mack to...
church authorities that the theatre was immoral, but Keiser and fellow composers such as Johann Mattheson
Johann Mattheson
Johann Mattheson was a German composer, writer, lexicographer, diplomat and music theorist.Mattheson was born and died in Hamburg. He was a close friend of George Frideric Handel, although he nearly killed him in a sudden quarrel, during a performance of Mattheson's opera Cleopatra in 1704...
broadened the range of subject matter to include the historical and the mythological. Keiser drew on foreign operatic traditions, for instance he included dances after the model of the French tradition of Lully
Jean-Baptiste Lully
Jean-Baptiste de Lully was an Italian-born French composer who spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He is considered the chief master of the French Baroque style. Lully disavowed any Italian influence in French music of the period. He became a French subject in...
. The recitative
Recitative
Recitative , also known by its Italian name "recitativo" , is a style of delivery in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms of ordinary speech...
in his operas was always in German so the audience could follow the plot, but from Claudius in 1703 he began to include arias in Italian which allowed for florid vocal display. The hallmark of the Hamburg style was its eclecticism. Orpheus
Orpheus (Telemann)
Orpheus is an opera in three acts by the German composer Georg Philipp Telemann. It was first performed in a concert version at the Theater am Gänsemarkt, Hamburg on 9 March 1726...
(1726) by Telemann contains arias in Italian setting texts taken from famous Handel
HANDEL
HANDEL was the code-name for the UK's National Attack Warning System in the Cold War. It consisted of a small console consisting of two microphones, lights and gauges. The reason behind this was to provide a back-up if anything failed....
operas as well as choruses in French to words originally set by Lully. Hamburg opera might also include comic characters (Keiser's Der Carneval von Venedig of 1707 has them speaking in the local Lower Saxon dialect), marking a great contrast to the elevated new style of opera seria
Opera seria
Opera seria is an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1710s to c. 1770...
as defined by Metastasio
Metastasio
Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi, better known by his pseudonym of Metastasio, was an Italian poet and librettist, considered the most important writer of opera seria libretti.-Early life:...
. Yet the immediate future belonged to Italian opera. The most famous German-born opera composer of the era, Handel
HANDEL
HANDEL was the code-name for the UK's National Attack Warning System in the Cold War. It consisted of a small console consisting of two microphones, lights and gauges. The reason behind this was to provide a back-up if anything failed....
, wrote four operas for Hamburg at the beginning of his career but soon moved on to write opera seria in Italy and England. In 1738, the Theater am Gänsemarkt went bankrupt and the fortunes of serious opera in German went into decline for the next few decades.
Opera seria and the growth of the Singspiel
The other leading German composers of the time tended to follow Handel's example. This was because the courts of the various German states favoured opera in Italian. In 1730 the chief proponent of opera seria, the Italian librettist MetastasioMetastasio
Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi, better known by his pseudonym of Metastasio, was an Italian poet and librettist, considered the most important writer of opera seria libretti.-Early life:...
, took up residence as the imperial poet in Vienna. Johann Adolf Hasse wrote operas in Italian for the court of the Elector of Saxony
Saxony
The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....
in Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
. Hasse also wrote operas for the court of Frederick the Great in Berlin, as did Carl Heinrich Graun
Carl Heinrich Graun
Carl Heinrich Graun was a German composer and tenor singer. Along with Johann Adolf Hasse, he is considered to be the most important German composer of Italian opera of his time.-Biography:...
. The king himself supplied the libretto for Graun's Montezuma
Montezuma (Graun)
Montezuma is an opera seria in three acts by the German composer Carl Heinrich Graun. The scenario was written in French by Graun's patron, Frederick the Great, the King of Prussia, and turned into an Italian libretto by Giampetro Tagliazucchi....
, first performed in 1755.
Singspiel
A Singspiel is a form of German-language music drama, now regarded as a genre of opera...
became the most popular form of German opera, especially in the hands of the composer Johann Adam Hiller. Hiller's 1766 reworking of the Singspiel Die verwandelten Weiber was a landmark in the history of the genre, although his most famous work would be Die Jagd
Die Jagd
Die Jagd is an opera by the German composer Johann Adam Hiller. It takes the form of a Singspiel in three acts. The libretto, by Christian Felix Weiße, is based on the plays La partie de chasse de Henri IV by Charles Collé, The King and the Miller of Mansfield by Robert Dodsley, and the opéra...
(1770). These Singspiele were comedies mixing spoken dialogue and singing, influenced by the similar genres of the ballad opera
Ballad opera
The term ballad opera is used to refer to a genre of English stage entertainment originating in the 18th century and continuing to develop in the following century and later. There are many types of ballad opera...
in England and the opéra comique
Opéra comique
Opéra comique is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged out of the popular opéra comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent , which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections...
in France. Often having sentimental plots and extremely simple music, Singspiele were no match for contemporary opera serias in artistic sophistication. Yet at the end of the 18th century a composer would emerge who would change all this: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
.
Mozart's Singspiele
Burgtheater
The Burgtheater , originally known as K.K. Theater an der Burg, then until 1918 as the K.K. Hofburgtheater, is the Austrian National Theatre in Vienna and one of the most important German language theatres in the world.The Burgtheater was created in 1741 and has become known as "die Burg" by the...
in Vienna. The experiment was short-lived and the troupe was dissolved in 1783, yet the previous year it had produced one undoubted success with Die Entführung aus dem Serail
Die Entführung aus dem Serail
Die Entführung aus dem Serail is an opera Singspiel in three acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The German libretto is by Christoph Friedrich Bretzner with adaptations by Gottlieb Stephanie...
by the young Mozart. Goethe immediately recognised the quality of the piece, declaring "it knocked us all sideways". In the following years commercial theatres sprang up in Vienna offering German-language opera. The impresario Emanuel Schikaneder
Emanuel Schikaneder
Emanuel Schikaneder , born Johann Joseph Schickeneder, was a German impresario, dramatist, actor, singer and composer. He was the librettist of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera The Magic Flute and the builder of the Theater an der Wien...
had particular success with his Theater auf der Wieden
Theater auf der Wieden
The Theater auf der Wieden, also called the Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden or the Wiednertheater, was a theater located in the then-suburban Wieden district of Vienna in the late 18th century...
on the outskirts of the city. In 1791, he persuaded Mozart to set one of his libretti, The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue....
. This proved to be no ordinary Singspiel. Though the traditional farcical elements remained, Mozart added a new seriousness, particularly in the music for Sarastro and his priests. Even more than Die Entführung, the Magic Flute pointed the way forward for future German opera.
Beethoven and Fidelio
The greatest German composer of the next generation, Beethoven, seized on The Magic Flutes blend of domestic comedy and high seriousness for his only opera,FidelioFidelio
Fidelio is a German opera in two acts by Ludwig van Beethoven. It is Beethoven's only opera. The German libretto is by Joseph Sonnleithner from the French of Jean-Nicolas Bouilly which had been used for the 1798 opera Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal by Pierre Gaveaux, and for the 1804 opera Leonora...
, the story of a devoted wife who saves her husband from political imprisonment. The years following the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
of 1789 had been some of the most turbulent in European history. In Fidelio, Beethoven wanted to express the ideals of that Revolution: liberty, equality and fraternity. He was also inspired by contemporary French works, particularly the "rescue operas" of Luigi Cherubini
Luigi Cherubini
Luigi Cherubini was an Italian composer who spent most of his working life in France. His most significant compositions are operas and sacred music. Beethoven regarded Cherubini as the greatest of his contemporaries....
. Beethoven was arguably not a natural composer of opera and, although Fidelio was premiered in 1805, it was not until 1814 that he produced its final version. Nevertheless, Fidelio is widely regarded as a masterpiece and is one of the key works in the German repertoire.
Early Romanticism
In the early years of the nineteenth century, the vast cultural movement known as RomanticismRomanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
began to exert an influence over German composers. The Romantics showed a keen interest in the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
as well as German folklore. The fairy tale collections of the Brothers Grimm
Brothers Grimm
The Brothers Grimm , Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors who collected folklore and published several collections of it as Grimm's Fairy Tales, which became very popular...
and the rediscovered Medieval German epic the Nibelungenlied
Nibelungenlied
The Nibelungenlied, translated as The Song of the Nibelungs, is an epic poem in Middle High German. The story tells of dragon-slayer Siegfried at the court of the Burgundians, how he was murdered, and of his wife Kriemhild's revenge....
were major sources of inspiration for the movement. There was also often a quest for a distinctively German identity, influenced by the new nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
which had arisen in the wake of the Napoleonic invasions. Romanticism was already firmly established in German literature with writers such as Tieck
Ludwig Tieck
Johann Ludwig Tieck was a German poet, translator, editor, novelist, writer of Novellen, and critic, who was one of the founding fathers of the Romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.-Early life:...
, Novalis
Novalis
Novalis was the pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg , an author and philosopher of early German Romanticism.-Biography:...
, Eichendorff and Clemens Brentano. One of the most famous German Romantic authors, E.T.A. Hoffmann
E.T.A. Hoffmann
Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann , better known by his pen name E.T.A. Hoffmann , was a German Romantic author of fantasy and horror, a jurist, composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist...
, was also a music theorist and a composer in his own right and in 1816 he produced an opera, Undine, in Berlin. Another important early Romantic opera was Faust
Faust (Spohr)
Faust is an opera by the German composer Louis Spohr. The libretto, by Josef Karl Bernard, is based on the legend of Faust; it is not influenced by Goethe's Faust, though Faust: The First Part of the Tragedy had been published in 1808. Instead, Carl Bernard's libretto draws mainly on Faust plays...
by Louis Spohr
Louis Spohr
Louis Spohr was a German composer, violinist and conductor. Born Ludewig Spohr, he is usually known by the French form of his name. Described by Dorothy Mayer as "The Forgotten Master", Spohr was once as famous as Beethoven. As a violinist, his virtuoso playing was admired by Queen Victoria...
(also 1816). Both Hoffmann and Spohr took the basic form of the Singspiel as their starting point but began to group the individual numbers into extended scenes. They also employed "reminiscence motifs", recurring musical themes associated with characters or concepts in the opera, which would pave the way for Wagner's
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
use of the leitmotif
Leitmotif
A leitmotif , sometimes written leit-motif, is a musical term , referring to a recurring theme, associated with a particular person, place, or idea. It is closely related to the musical idea of idée fixe...
.
Weber
Der Freischütz
Der Freischütz is an opera in three acts by Carl Maria von Weber with a libretto by Friedrich Kind. It premiered on 18 June 1821 at the Schauspielhaus Berlin...
by Carl Maria von Weber
Carl Maria von Weber
Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber was a German composer, conductor, pianist, guitarist and critic, one of the first significant composers of the Romantic school....
, premiered in Berlin on June 18, 1821. Weber resented the Europe-wide dominance of the Italian operas of Rossini and wanted to establish a uniquely German style of opera. He turned to German folk songs and folklore for inspiration; Der Freischütz is based on a tale from the Gespensterbuch ("Book of Wraiths") of Apel and Laun concerning a marksman who makes a pact with the Devil. Weber's strong point was his striking ability to evoke atmosphere through orchestral colour. From the very first bars of the overture, it is obvious we are in the primeval forests of Germany. The highlight of the opera is the chilling Wolf's Glen Scene in which the hero Max makes his deal with the Devil. Der Freischütz was immensely popular, not only in Germany, but throughout Europe. Weber never really achieved his full potential as an opera composer due to his early death from tuberculosis and his poor choice of libretti. His major German opera after Der Freischütz, Euryanthe
Euryanthe
Euryanthe is a German "grand, heroic, romantic" opera by Carl Maria von Weber, first performed at the Theater am Kärntnertor, Vienna on 25 October 1823...
(1823), suffers from a particularly weak text and is rarely staged nowadays. Yet Euryanthe marks another important stage in the development of serious German opera. Weber completely eliminated spoken dialogue, producing a "through-composed" work where the distinction between recitative and aria is becoming blurred. Its lessons would not be lost on future composers, most notably Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
.
Other composers of the time
Weber's most important successor in the field of Romantic opera was Heinrich MarschnerHeinrich Marschner
Heinrich August Marschner , was the most important composer of German Romantic opera between Carl Maria von Weber and Richard Wagner, and is remembered principally for his operas Hans Heiling , Der Vampyr , and Der Templer und die Jüdin...
, who further explored the Gothic
Gothic art
Gothic art was a Medieval art movement that developed in France out of Romanesque art in the mid-12th century, led by the concurrent development of Gothic architecture. It spread to all of Western Europe, but took over art more completely north of the Alps, never quite effacing more classical...
and the supernatural in works such as Der Vampyr
Der Vampyr
Der Vampyr is a Romantic opera in two acts by Heinrich Marschner. The German libretto by Wilhelm August Wohlbrück is based on the play Der Vampir oder die Totenbraut by Heinrich Ludwig Ritter, which itself was based on the short novel The Vampyre by John Polidori...
(1828) and Hans Heiling
Hans Heiling
Hans Heiling is a German Romantic opera in 3 acts with prologue by Heinrich Marschner with a libretto by Eduard Devrient, who also sang the title role at the première which occurred at the Königliche Hofoper , Berlin on 24 May 1833, and went on to become his most successful opera...
(1833). On the other hand, it was with comic opera that Albert Lortzing
Albert Lortzing
Gustav Albert Lortzing was a German composer, actor and singer. He is considered to be the main representative of the German Spieloper, a form similar to the French opéra comique, which grew out of the Singspiel.-Biography:Lortzing was born in Berlin to Johann Gottlieb Lortzing and Charlotte Sophie...
scored his biggest successes. The popularity of pieces such as Zar und Zimmermann
Zar und Zimmermann
Zar und Zimmermann is an opera in three acts, music by Albert Lortzing, libretto by the composer after Georg Christian Römer's Der Bürgermeister on Saarlem, oder Die zwei Peter, itself based on a French work entitled Le Bourgesmestre de Sardam, ou Les deux Pierres by Anne-Honoré-Joseph Duveyrier...
continues in Germany today, though Lortzing's operas are rarely staged abroad. Though he began in Germany, Giacomo Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer was a noted German opera composer, and the first great exponent of "grand opera." At his peak in the 1830s and 1840s, he was the most famous and successful composer of opera in Europe, yet he is rarely performed today.-Early years:He was born to a Jewish family in Tasdorf , near...
was more famous for his contributions to Italian and (especially) French opera. He fused elements from all three national styles into his conception of grand opera
Grand Opera
Grand opera is a genre of 19th-century opera generally in four or five acts, characterised by large-scale casts and orchestras, and lavish and spectacular design and stage effects, normally with plots based on or around dramatic historic events...
, which had an important influence on the development of German music, including Wagner's early works. Other notable operas of the time include Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (1849) by Otto Nicolai and Martha
Martha (opera)
Martha, oder Der Markt zu Richmond is a 'romantic comic' opera in four acts by Friedrich von Flotow, set to a German libretto by Friedrich Wilhelm Riese and based on a story by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges....
(1847) by Friedrich von Flotow
Friedrich von Flotow
Friedrich Adolf Ferdinand, Freiherr von Flotow was a German composer. He is chiefly remembered for his opera Martha, which was popular in the 19th century....
. Later came Peter Cornelius
Peter Cornelius
Carl August Peter Cornelius was a German composer, writer about music, poet and translator. He was born and died in Mainz where his grave in the Hauptfriedhof survives....
(Der Barbier von Bagdad
Der Barbier von Bagdad
Der Barbier von Bagdad is a comic opera in two acts by Peter Cornelius to a German libretto by the composer, based on The Tale of the Tailor and The Barber’s Stories of his Six Brothers in A Thousand and One Nights...
, 1858), Hermann Goetz
Hermann Goetz
Hermann Gustav Goetz was a German composer.After studying in Berlin, he moved to Switzerland in 1863. After ten years spent as a critic, pianist and conductor as well, he spent the last three years of his life composing...
(Der Widerspänstigen Zähmung
Der Widerspänstigen Zähmung
Der Widerspänstigen Zähmung is a comic opera in four acts by the German composer Hermann Goetz. It was written between 1868 and 1872 and first performed in Mannheim, Germany on 11 October 1874 under the conductor Ernst Frank...
, 1874) and Karl Goldmark
Karl Goldmark
Karl Goldmark, also known originally as Károly Goldmark and later sometimes as Carl Goldmark; May 18, 1830, Keszthely – January 2, 1915, Vienna) was a Hungarian composer.- Life and career :...
(Die Königin von Saba
Die Königin von Saba
Die Königin von Saba is an opera in four acts by Karl Goldmark. The German libretto by Hermann Salomon Mosenthal, sets a love triangle into the context of the Queen of Sheba's visit to the court of King Solomon, recorded in First Kings...
, 1875).
Mention should be made of two great composers of the era who wrote their major works in other genres yet also composed operas: Franz Schubert
Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...
and Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
. Schubert wrote over a dozen operas, mostly in the Singspiel style. Hardly any were performed during the composer's lifetime. Schumann only wrote one opera, Genoveva
Genoveva
Genoveva is an opera in four acts by Robert Schumann in the genre of German Romanticism with a libretto by Robert Reinick and the composer. The only opera Schumann ever wrote, it received its first performance on 25 June 1850 at the Stadttheater in Leipzig, with the composer conducting...
, first staged in Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
in 1850. Though praised by Liszt
Liszt
Liszt is a Hungarian surname. Notable persons with that surname include:* Franz Liszt , Hungarian composer and pianist* Adam Liszt , father of Franz Liszt* Anna Liszt , mother of Franz Liszt...
, it failed to win lasting success. The verdict on both these composer's operas has generally been that, though they contain excellent music, they have too many dramatic weaknesses to be acclaimed as great stage works.
Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
was one of the most revolutionary and controversial composers in musical history and his innovations changed the course of opera, not just in Germany and Austria but throughout Europe. Wagner gradually evolved a new concept of opera as a Gesamtkunstwerk (a "complete work of art"), a fusion of music, poetry and painting. His earliest experiments followed the examples set by Weber
Carl Maria von Weber
Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber was a German composer, conductor, pianist, guitarist and critic, one of the first significant composers of the Romantic school....
(Die Feen
Die Feen
Die Feen is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. The German libretto was written by the composer after Carlo Gozzi's La donna serpente.Die Feen was Wagner's first completed opera, but remained unperformed in his lifetime...
) and Meyerbeer (Rienzi
Rienzi
Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen is an early opera by Richard Wagner in five acts, with the libretto written by the composer after Bulwer-Lytton's novel of the same name . The title is commonly shortened to Rienzi...
), but his most important formative influence was probably the symphonic
Symphony
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...
music of Beethoven. Wagner believed his career truly began with Der fliegende Holländer (1843). Together with the two works which followed, Tannhäuser
Tannhäuser (opera)
Tannhäuser is an opera in three acts, music and text by Richard Wagner, based on the two German legends of Tannhäuser and the song contest at Wartburg...
and Lohengrin
Lohengrin (opera)
Lohengrin is a romantic opera in three acts composed and written by Richard Wagner, first performed in 1850. The story of the eponymous character is taken from medieval German romance, notably the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach and its sequel, Lohengrin, written by a different author, itself...
, this has been described as the "zenith of German Romantic opera". Yet these were merely a prelude to even more radical developments. In his mature dramas, Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the romance by Gottfried von Straßburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting...
, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is an opera in three acts, written and composed by Richard Wagner. It is among the longest operas still commonly performed today, usually taking around four and a half hours. It was first performed at the Königliches Hof- und National-Theater in Munich, on June 21,...
, Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen is a cycle of four epic operas by the German composer Richard Wagner . The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied...
and Parsifal
Parsifal
Parsifal is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. It is loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the 13th century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival and his quest for the Holy Grail, and on Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail.Wagner first conceived the work...
, Wagner abolished the distinction between aria and recitative in favour of a seamless flow of "endless melody". He greatly increased the role and power of the orchestra, creating scores with a complex web of leitmotif
Leitmotif
A leitmotif , sometimes written leit-motif, is a musical term , referring to a recurring theme, associated with a particular person, place, or idea. It is closely related to the musical idea of idée fixe...
s; and he was prepared to violate accepted musical conventions, such as tonality
Tonality
Tonality is a system of music in which specific hierarchical pitch relationships are based on a key "center", or tonic. The term tonalité originated with Alexandre-Étienne Choron and was borrowed by François-Joseph Fétis in 1840...
, in his quest for greater expressivity. Wagner also brought a new philosophical dimension to opera in his works, which were usually based on stories from Germanic
Germanic mythology
Germanic mythology is a comprehensive term for myths associated with historical Germanic paganism, including Norse mythology, Anglo-Saxon mythology, Continental Germanic mythology, and other versions of the mythologies of the Germanic peoples...
or Arthurian legend. Finally, Wagner built his own opera house at Bayreuth, exclusively dedicated to performing his own works in the style he wanted.
After Wagner
Wagner's innovations cast an immense shadow over subsequent composers, who struggled to absorb his influence while retaining their own individuality. One of the most successful composers of the following generation was Engelbert HumperdinckEngelbert Humperdinck
Engelbert Humperdinck was a German composer, best known for his opera, Hänsel und Gretel. Humperdinck was born at Siegburg in the Rhine Province; at the age of 67 he died in Neustrelitz, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.-Life:After receiving piano lessons, Humperdinck produced his first composition...
, whose Hänsel und Gretel (1893) still has an assured place in the standard repertoire. Humperdinck turned back to folk song and the tales of the Brothers Grimm
Brothers Grimm
The Brothers Grimm , Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors who collected folklore and published several collections of it as Grimm's Fairy Tales, which became very popular...
for inspiration. Yet, though Hänsel is often viewed as the ideal piece for introducing opera to children, it also has extraordinarily sophisticated orchestration and makes great use of leitmotifs, both tell-tale signs of Wagner's influence.
Other composers of the era who tried their hand at opera include Hugo Wolf
Hugo Wolf
Hugo Wolf was an Austrian composer of Slovene origin, particularly noted for his art songs, or lieder. He brought to this form a concentrated expressive intensity which was unique in late Romantic music, somewhat related to that of the Second Viennese School in concision but utterly unrelated in...
(Der Corregidor
Der Corregidor
Der Corregidor is a comic opera by Hugo Wolf. The libretto was written by Rosa Mayreder-Obermayer, based on the short novel by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón.-Composition history:...
, 1896) and Wagner's own son Siegfried
Siegfried Wagner
Siegfried Wagner was a German composer and conductor, the son of Richard Wagner. He was an opera composer and the artistic director of the Bayreuth Festival from 1908 to 1930.-Life:...
.
Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
was heavily influenced by Wagner, despite his father's efforts to the contrary. By seventeen, he was unimpressed with Tannhäuser
Tannhäuser (opera)
Tannhäuser is an opera in three acts, music and text by Richard Wagner, based on the two German legends of Tannhäuser and the song contest at Wartburg...
, Lohengrin
Lohengrin (opera)
Lohengrin is a romantic opera in three acts composed and written by Richard Wagner, first performed in 1850. The story of the eponymous character is taken from medieval German romance, notably the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach and its sequel, Lohengrin, written by a different author, itself...
and Siegfried
Siegfried (opera)
Siegfried is the third of the four operas that constitute Der Ring des Nibelungen , by Richard Wagner. It received its premiere at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on 16 August 1876, as part of the first complete performance of The Ring...
but absolutely entranced by the other three pieces of the Ring
Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen is a cycle of four epic operas by the German composer Richard Wagner . The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied...
and Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the romance by Gottfried von Straßburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting...
. Although in his early years he was more famous for his orchestral tone poems, Salome
Salome (opera)
Salome is an opera in one act by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by the composer, based on Hedwig Lachmann’s German translation of the French play Salomé by Oscar Wilde. Strauss dedicated the opera to his friend Sir Edgar Speyer....
(1905) and Elektra
Elektra (opera)
Elektra is a one-act opera by Richard Strauss, to a German-language libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, which he adapted from his 1903 drama Elektra. The opera was the first of many collaborations between Strauss and Hofmannsthal...
(1907) quickly established his reputation as Germany's leading opera composer. These two operas stretched the tonal music system to its breaking point. The highly chromatic music featured harsh dissonances and unresolved harmonies. This, paired with the gruesome subject matter, looked forward to expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
. Elektra also marked the beginning of Strauss's working relationship with the leading Austrian poet and playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Hugo Laurenz August Hofmann von Hofmannsthal ; , was an Austrian novelist, librettist, poet, dramatist, narrator, and essayist.-Early life:...
, who would provide another five libretti for the composer. With Der Rosenkavalier
Der Rosenkavalier
Der Rosenkavalier is a comic opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to an original German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It is loosely adapted from the novel Les amours du chevalier de Faublas by Louvet de Couvrai and Molière’s comedy Monsieur de Pourceaugnac...
of 1910, Strauss changed direction, looking towards Mozart and the world of the Viennese waltz
Waltz
The waltz is a ballroom and folk dance in time, performed primarily in closed position.- History :There are several references to a sliding or gliding dance,- a waltz, from the 16th century including the representations of the printer H.S. Beheim...
as much as towards Wagner. Modernist critics accused him of "selling out", but Rosenkavalier proved an immense success with audiences around the world. Strauss continued to ignore critical fashion, producing the mixture of farce and high tragedy of Ariadne auf Naxos
Ariadne auf Naxos
Ariadne auf Naxos is an opera by Richard Strauss with a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Bringing together slapstick comedy and consuming beautiful music, the opera's theme is the competition between high and low art for the public's attention.- First version :The opera was originally...
, the complex allegory of Die Frau ohne Schatten
Die Frau ohne Schatten
Die Frau ohne Schatten is an opera in three acts by Richard Strauss with a libretto by his long-time collaborator, the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It was written between 1911 and either 1915 or 1917...
, the domestic dramas of Intermezzo
Intermezzo (opera)
Intermezzo is an opera in two acts by Richard Strauss to his own German libretto, described as a Bürgerliche Komödie mit sinfonischen Zwischenspielen . It premiered at the Dresden Semperoper on November 4, 1924, with sets that reproduced Strauss' home in Garmisch...
and Arabella
Arabella
Arabella is a lyric comedy or opera in 3 acts by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, their sixth and last operatic collaboration. It was first performed on 1 July 1933, at the Dresden Sächsisches Staatstheater....
, and the mythological Die ägyptische Helena
Die ägyptische Helena
Die ägyptische Helena is an opera in two acts by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It premiered at the Dresden Semperoper on June 6, 1928...
and Daphne
Daphne (opera)
Daphne is an opera in one act by Richard Strauss, his 13th opera, subtitled "A Bucolic Tragedy in One Act". The German libretto was by Joseph Gregor. The opera is based loosely on a myth from Ovid's Metamorphoses, and also includes elements taken from The Bacchae by Euripides...
. Strauss bid farewell to the musical stage with Capriccio
Capriccio (opera)
Capriccio is the final opera by German composer Richard Strauss, subtitled "A Conversation Piece for Music". The opera received its premiere performance at the Nationaltheater München on October 28, 1942. Clemens Krauss and Strauss himself wrote the German libretto...
of 1942, a "conversation piece" which explores the relationship between words and music in opera.
Other late Romantics
Other composers styled "late Romantic", such as Franz SchrekerFranz Schreker
Franz Schreker was an Austrian composer, conductor, teacher and administrator. Primarily a composer of operas, his style is characterized by aesthetic plurality , timbral experimentation, strategies of extended tonality and...
(Der ferne Klang
Der ferne Klang
Der ferne Klang is an opera by Franz Schreker, libretto by the composer.-Composition history:Drafted in 1901, Schreker completed the three-act libretto in 1903. However, composing the music would take about ten years. Criticism from his composition teacher Robert Fuchs caused Schreker to abandon...
, 1912; Der Schatzgräber
Der Schatzgräber
Der Schatzgräber is an opera in four acts, with a prologue and an epilogue, by Franz Schreker, libretto by the composer.-Composition history:...
, 1920), Alexander von Zemlinsky
Alexander von Zemlinsky
Alexander Zemlinsky or Alexander von Zemlinsky was an Austrian composer, conductor, and teacher.-Early life:...
(Eine florentinische Tragödie
Eine florentinische Tragödie
Eine florentinische Tragödie , Op. 16 is an opera in one act by Alexander Zemlinsky to a libretto adapted by the composer from a German translation by Max Meyerfeld of a play by Oscar Wilde.-Performance history:...
, 1917; Der Zwerg
Der Zwerg
Der Zwerg , Op.17 is an opera in one act by Austrian composer Alexander Zemlinsky to a libretto by Georg Klaren, freely adapted from the short story The Birthday of the Infanta by Oscar Wilde.-Composition history:...
, 1922) and Erich Korngold (Die tote Stadt
Die tote Stadt
Die tote Stadt is an opera in three acts by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. The libretto is by the composer and Paul Schott , and is based on Bruges-la-Morte, a short novel by Georges Rodenbach.-Performance history:When Die tote Stadt had its premiere on December 4, 1920, Korngold was just 23...
, 1920) explored similar territory to Strauss's Salome and Elektra. They combined Wagnerian influences, lush orchestration, strange harmonies and dissonances with "decadent
Decadent movement
The Decadent movement was a late 19th century artistic and literary movement of Western Europe. It flourished in France, but also had devotees in England and throughout Europe, as well as in the United States.-Overview:...
" subject matter reflecting the dominance of Expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
in the arts and the contemporary psychological explorations of Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
. All three composers suffered persecution and eclipse under the Nazis, who condemned their works as entartete Musik ("degenerate music"). Hans Pfitzner
Hans Pfitzner
Hans Erich Pfitzner was a German composer and self-described anti-modernist. His best known work is the post-Romantic opera Palestrina, loosely based on the life of the great sixteenth-century composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.-Biography:Pfitzner was born in Moscow, Russia, where his...
was another late Romantic post-Wagnerian, albeit of a more conservative stripe. His major opera Palestrina
Palestrina (opera)
Palestrina is an opera by the German composer Hans Pfitzner, first performed in 1917. The composer referred to it as a Musikalische Legende , and wrote the libretto himself, based on a legend about the Renaissance musician Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, who saves the art of contrapuntal music ...
(1917) makes the case for tradition and inspiration rather than musical modernism.
The heyday of operetta
In the late nineteenth century, a new, lighter form of opera, operettaOperetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...
, became popular in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
. Operettas had immediately attractive tunes, comic (and often frivolous) plots and used spoken dialogue between the musical "numbers". Viennese operetta was inspired by the fashion for the French operettas of Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....
. Der Pensionat (1860) by Franz von Suppé
Franz von Suppé
Franz von Suppé or Francesco Suppé Demelli was an Austrian composer of light operas who was born in what is now Croatia during the time his father was working in this outpost of the Austro-Hungarian Empire...
is generally regarded as the first important operetta in the German language, but by far the most famous example of the genre is Die Fledermaus
Die Fledermaus
Die Fledermaus is an operetta composed by Johann Strauss II to a German libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée.- Literary sources :...
(1874) by Johann Strauss
Johann Strauss II
Johann Strauss II , also known as Johann Baptist Strauss or Johann Strauss, Jr., the Younger, or the Son , was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other types of dance music, as well as several operettas...
. Franz Lehár
Franz Lehár
Franz Lehár was an Austrian-Hungarian composer. He is mainly known for his operettas of which the most successful and best known is The Merry Widow .-Biography:...
's The Merry Widow
The Merry Widow
The Merry Widow is an operetta by the Austro–Hungarian composer Franz Lehár. The librettists, Viktor Léon and Leo Stein, based the story – concerning a rich widow, and her countrymen's attempt to keep her money in the principality by finding her the right husband – on an 1861 comedy play,...
(1905) was another massive hit. Other composers who worked in this style include Oscar Straus
Oscar Straus
Oscar Straus may refer to:*Oscar Straus , Viennese composer of operettas*Oscar Straus , United States Secretary of Commerce and Labor from 1906 to 1909...
and Sigmund Romberg
Sigmund Romberg
Sigmund Romberg was a Hungarian-born American composer, best known for his operettas.-Biography:Romberg was born as Siegmund Rosenberg to a Jewish family in Gross-Kanizsa during the Austro-Hungarian kaiserlich und königlich monarchy period...
.
Modernism: the Second Viennese School
Following the example of Wagner, Richard Strauss, Zemlinsky and Schreker had pushed traditional tonality to the absolute limits. Now a new group of composers appeared in Vienna who wanted to take music beyond. Operatic modernismModernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
truly began in the operas of two composers of the so-called Second Viennese School
Second Viennese School
The Second Viennese School is the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils and close associates in early 20th century Vienna, where he lived and taught, sporadically, between 1903 and 1925...
, Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
and his acolyte Alban Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...
, both advocates of atonality
Atonality
Atonality in its broadest sense describes music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality in this sense usually describes compositions written from about 1908 to the present day where a hierarchy of pitches focusing on a single, central tone is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale...
and its later development (as worked out by Schoenberg), dodecaphony. Schoenberg's early musico-dramatic works, Erwartung
Erwartung
Erwartung , Op.17 is a one-act opera by Arnold Schoenberg to a libretto by Marie Pappenheim. Composed in 1909, it was not premiered until June 6, 1924 in Prague conducted by Alexander Zemlinsky with Marie Gutheil-Schoder as the soprano. The work takes the unusual form of a monologue for solo...
(1909, premiered in 1924) and Die glückliche Hand
Die glückliche Hand
Die glückliche Hand , , is a Drama mit Musik by Arnold Schoenberg in four scenes. It was composed between 1910 and 1913. Like Erwartung, composed a year earlier, it was heavily influenced by Otto Weininger's book Sex and Character. Unlike Erwartung, Schoenberg wrote the libretto for Die glückliche...
display heavy use of chromatic harmony and dissonance in general. Schoenberg also occasionally used Sprechstimme, which he described as: "The voice rising and falling relative to the indicated intervals, and everything being bound together with the time and rhythm of the music except where a pause is indicated". Schoenberg intended Moses und Aron
Moses und Aron
Moses und Aron is a three-act opera by Arnold Schoenberg with the third act unfinished. The German libretto was by the composer after the Book of Exodus.-Compositional history:...
as his operatic masterpiece, but it was left unfinished at his death.
The two operas of Schoenberg's pupil Alban Berg, Wozzeck
Wozzeck
Wozzeck is the first opera by the Austrian composer Alban Berg. It was composed between 1914 and 1922 and first performed in 1925. The opera is based on the drama Woyzeck left incomplete by the German playwright Georg Büchner at his death. Berg attended the first production in Vienna of Büchner's...
and Lulu
Lulu (opera)
Lulu is an opera by the composer Alban Berg. The libretto was adapted by Berg himself from Frank Wedekind's plays Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora .-Composition history:...
(left incomplete at his death) share many of the same characteristics described above, though Berg combined his highly personal interpretation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique with melodic passages of a more traditionally tonal nature (quite Mahlerian in character). This perhaps partially explains why his operas have remained in standard repertory, despite their controversial music and plots.
1918–1945: Weimar Germany, Inter-war Austria and the Third Reich
The years following World War I saw German and Austrian culture flourishing in spite of the surrounding political turmoil. Late Romantic composers were still at work alongside the avowed modernists Schoenberg and Berg. The Italian-born Ferruccio BusoniFerruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor.-Biography:...
ploughed an individual furrow, attempting to fuse Bach
Bạch
Bạch is a Vietnamese surname. The name is transliterated as Bai in Chinese and Baek, in Korean.Bach is the anglicized variation of the surname Bạch.-Notable people with the surname Bạch:* Bạch Liêu...
and the avant-garde, Mediterranean and Germanic culture in his music. He never lived to finish his most significant opera Doktor Faust
Doktor Faust
Doktor Faust is an opera by Ferruccio Busoni with a German libretto by the composer himself, based on the myth of Faust. Busoni worked on the opera, which he intended as his masterpiece, between 1916 and 1924, but it was still incomplete at the time of his death. His pupil Philipp Jarnach finished it...
(1925). Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...
began his operatic career with short, scandalous pieces such as Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen
Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen
Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen is an opera in one act by Paul Hindemith, with a German libretto by Oskar Kokoschka based on his play written in 1907....
("Murder, Hope of Women") before turning to Bach, as Busoni had done. Hindemith saw Bach-inspired "neo-classicism" as a way of curbing the excesses of late Romanticism. Cardillac
Cardillac
Cardillac is an opera by Paul Hindemith in three acts and four scenes. Ferdinand Lion wrote the libretto based on the short story Das Fräulein von Scuderi by E.T.A. Hoffmann.-Performance history:...
(1925) was his first work in this vein. Hindemith was also interested in putting contemporary life on the stage in his operas (a concept called Zeitoper), as was Ernst Krenek
Ernst Krenek
Ernst Krenek was an Austrian of Czech origin and, from 1945, American composer. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including Music Here and Now , a study of Johannes Ockeghem , and Horizons Circled: Reflections on my Music...
whose Jonny spielt auf
Jonny spielt auf
Jonny spielt auf is an opera with words and music by Ernst Krenek about a jazz violinist. The work typified the cultural freedom of the 'golden era' of the Weimar Republic.-Performance history:...
(1927) has a jazz violinist as its hero. Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...
reflected life in Weimar Germany
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
in a more overtly political way. His most famous collaboration with Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
, The Threepenny Opera
The Threepenny Opera
The Threepenny Opera is a musical by German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill, in collaboration with translator Elisabeth Hauptmann and set designer Caspar Neher. It was adapted from an 18th-century English ballad opera, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, and offers a Marxist critique...
(1928), was both a scandal and an immense box-office success.
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
's assumption of power destroyed this thriving operatic scene. Ironically, after the burning of the Reichstag
Reichstag fire
The Reichstag fire was an arson attack on the Reichstag building in Berlin on 27 February 1933. The event is seen as pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany....
in 1933, the German seat of the government was moved to the Krolloper
Krolloper
The Kroll Opera House was an opera building in Berlin, Germany, located in the central Tiergarten district on the western edge of the Königsplatz square , facing the Reichstag building. It was built in 1844 as an entertainment venue for the restaurant owner Joseph Kroll...
, the state opera house in Berlin which, under the adventurous directorship of Otto Klemperer
Otto Klemperer
Otto Klemperer was a German conductor and composer. He is widely regarded as one of the leading conductors of the 20th century.-Biography:Otto Klemperer was born in Breslau, Silesia Province, then in Germany...
, had seen the premieres of many innovative works of the 1920s, including Hindemith's Neues vom Tage
Neues vom Tage
Neues vom Tage is an opera in three parts by Paul Hindemith, with a German libretto by Marcellus Schiffer....
. Now Hindemith responded to the advent of the Third Reich with his chief work Mathis der Maler, a portrait of an artist trying to survive in hostile times. It received its premiere in Zürich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
in 1938, since all performances of Hindemith's music had been banned in Germany the previous year. In 1940, Hindemith left Switzerland for the United States, joining a transatlantic exodus of composers which included Schoenberg, Weill, Korngold and Zemlinsky. Schreker had died in 1934, having been dismissed from his teaching post by the Nazis; other composers, such as the promising Viktor Ullmann
Viktor Ullmann
Viktor Ullmann was a Silesia-born Austrian, later Czech composer, conductor and pianist of Jewish origin.- Biography :...
, would perish in the death camps. Some opera composers, including Carl Orff
Carl Orff
Carl Orff was a 20th-century German composer, best known for his cantata Carmina Burana . In addition to his career as a composer, Orff developed an influential method of music education for children.-Early life:...
, Werner Egk
Werner Egk
Werner Egk , born Werner Joseph Mayer, was a German composer.-Early career:He was born in the Swabian town of Auchsesheim, today part of Donauwörth, Germany. His family, of Catholic peasant stock, moved to Augsburg when Egk was six. He studied at a Benedictine Gymnasium and entered the municipal...
and the ageing Richard Strauss, remained in Germany to accommodate with the new regime as best they could.
German opera since 1945
Composers writing after World War II had to find a way of coming to terms with the destruction caused by the Third Reich. The modernism of Schoenberg and Berg proved attractive to young composers, since their works had been banned by the Nazis and were free of any taint of the former regime. Bernd Alois ZimmermannBernd Alois Zimmermann
Bernd Alois Zimmermann was a post-WWII West German composer. He is perhaps best known for his opera Die Soldaten which is regarded as one of the most important operas of the 20th century...
looked to the example of Berg's Wozzeck
Wozzeck
Wozzeck is the first opera by the Austrian composer Alban Berg. It was composed between 1914 and 1922 and first performed in 1925. The opera is based on the drama Woyzeck left incomplete by the German playwright Georg Büchner at his death. Berg attended the first production in Vienna of Büchner's...
for his only opera Die Soldaten
Die Soldaten
Die Soldaten is a four act opera in German by German composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann, based on the 1776 play by Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz. It is dedicated to Hans Rosbaud. Zimmermann himself faithfully adapted the play into the libretto, the only changes to the text being repeats and small cuts...
(1965), and Aribert Reimann
Aribert Reimann
Aribert Reimann is a German opera composer, pianist and accompanist, known especially for his literary operas. His version of King Lear was written at the suggestion of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau who sang the title role....
continued the tradition of expressionism with his Shakespearean Lear
Lear (opera)
Lear is an opera in two acts with music by the German composer Aribert Reimann, and a libretto by Claus H. Henneberg, based on Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear.-Background and performance history:...
(1978). Perhaps the most versatile and internationally famous post-war German opera composer is Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze is a German composer of prodigious output best known for "his consistent cultivation of music for the theatre throughout his life"...
, who has produced a series of works which mix Bergian influences with those of Italian composers such as Verdi. Examples of his operas are Boulevard Solitude
Boulevard Solitude
Boulevard Solitutde is a Lyrisches Drama or opera in one act by Hans Werner Henze to a German libretto by Grete Weil after the play by Walter Jockisch, in its turn a modern telling of François Prévost's Manon Lescaut. The premiere was on February 17, 1952 at the Landestheater, Hanover...
, The Bassarids
The Bassarids
The Bassarids is an opera in one act and an intermezzo, with music Hans Werner Henze to an English libretto by W. H...
(to a libretto by W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...
) and Das verratene Meer
Das verratene Meer
Das verratene Meer is an opera in two parts and 14 scenes, with music by Hans Werner Henze to a German libretto by Hans-Ulrich Treichel, after Yukio Mishima's novel The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea...
. Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
set off in an even more avant-garde direction with his enormous operatic cycle based on the seven days of the week, Licht
Licht
Licht , subtitled "The Seven Days of the Week," is a cycle of seven operas composed by Karlheinz Stockhausen between 1977 and 2003. In total, the cycle contains over 29 hours of music.-Origin:...
(1977–). Giselher Klebe
Giselher Klebe
Giselher Wolfgang Klebe was a German composer. He composed more than 140 works, among them 14 operas, 8 symphonies, 15 solo concerts, chamber music, piano works, and sacred music.-Biography:...
created an extensive body of work in the operatic genre based on literary
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
works. Other leading composers still producing operas today include Wolfgang Rihm
Wolfgang Rihm
Wolfgang Rihm is a German composer.Rihm is Head of the Institute of Modern Music at the Karlsruhe Conservatory of Music and has been composer in residence at the Lucerne Festival and the Salzburg Festival...
and Olga Neuwirth
Olga Neuwirth
Olga Neuwirth is an Austrian composer.As a child at the age of seven, Neuwirth began lessons on trumpet. She later studied composition in Vienna at the Vienna Academy of Music and Performing Arts under Erich Urbanner, while studying at the Electroacoustic Institute...
.
General sources
- The Oxford Illustrated History of Opera, ed. Roger Parker (OUP, 1994)
- The Viking Opera Guide, ed. Amanda Holden (Viking, 1993)
- A Short History of Opera, Donald Grout (Columbia University Press, fourth edition, 2003)
- The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, ed. Stanly Sadie (OUP, 1992)
External links
- Online Portal on Opera and Classical Music in Germany, Goethe-InstitutGoethe-InstitutThe Goethe-Institut is a non-profit German cultural institution operational worldwide, promoting the study of the German language abroad and encouraging international cultural exchange and relations. The Goethe-Institut also fosters knowledge about Germany by providing information on German...