Maria Antonia of Bavaria
Maria Antonia Walpurgis Symphorosa von Bayern (* July 18, 1724 in Munich , † April 23, 1780 in Dresden ) was a princess from the house of the Wittelsbach family and by marriage to her first cousin Friedrich Christian Elector of Saxony on October 5, 1763 until December 17, 1763 Electress of Saxony. After his death she was the guardian regent until her son Friedrich August came of age . In addition, unlike other princesses of her time, she did not only pursue superficial artistic occupation, but was also successful as an art patron , composer , opera singer (soprano), painter and poet .
Life
Maria Antonia was the daughter of the Bavarian Elector Karl Albrecht, the later Roman-German Emperor Karl VII , from his marriage to the Austrian Archduchess Maria Amalie . As the eldest surviving daughter of the couple and thus sought-after for a marriage among the European princes, she was of political importance from the start and enjoyed a proper upbringing, which also included painting, poetry and learning to play instruments. On June 20, 1747, she married the Elector of Saxony Friedrich Christian in Dresden , her first cousin, with whom she had to flee from the Prussians to Prague and Munich during the Seven Years' War in 1759 and who was elector only ten weeks after his accession to the throne December 1763 died of smallpox . Since the eldest son of the couple, now Elector Friedrich August III. was still a minor and the business of government could not run independently, the mother took with her brother Franz Xaver of Saxony the government as regent guardianship to 1768 Electoral Saxony . However, the falling out between the two occurred in 1765, when Franz Xavier declared that his nephew would renounce the rights to the Polish succession to the throne, while Maria Antonia was determined to maintain this prestigious claim.
She also worked as an entrepreneur: for example, in 1763 she set up a calico factory near Naundorf and from 1766 had owned the Bavarian brewery in Dresden. She was a member of the order of the "slaves of virtue", in whose vestments she was buried. Towards the end of her life she wrote a treatise "On the fortification of the mind against the horrors of death".
She was buried in the donor's crypt in the Dresden court church.
Maria Antonia as an artist
Her parents celebrated her birth with a performance of Pietro Torri's opera Amadis de Grecia . In her youth in Munich she received composition lessons from the renowned opera composers Giovanni Battista Ferrandini and Nicola Antonio Porpora . At the celebrations for her wedding to Friedrich Christian von Sachsen (1747), Christoph Willibald Gluck's opera Le nozze d'Ercole e d'Ebe and Johann Adolf Hasse's La Spartana generosa performed . In Dresden she continued her music studies with Hasse and Nicola Porpora and felt particularly connected to the style of the opera seria . She appeared as a singer and harpsichordist in performing her own works in this genre as well as in numerous performances at court. In 1747 she was accepted into the Accademia dell'Arcadia in Rome , an international literary academy and institution for reforming the opera. The members communicated with one another without considering their class differences and adopted shepherd names (pseudonyms) for this purpose in the sense of a simple, natural country life. Maria Antonia received the name Ermelinda Talea Pastorella Arcadia (ETPA).
In addition to many other artists and scientists, she also supported the conductor Johann Gottlieb Naumann and the Mengs family of painters .
Pedigree
| Pedigree of Maria Antonia of Bavaria | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Great-great-grandparents |
Elector |
Duke |
Jakub Sobieski (1590–1646) |
Henri de la Grange d'Arquien (1613–1707) |
Emperor Ferdinand III. (1608–1657) |
Elector Philipp Wilhelm of the Palatinate (1615–1690) |
Georg Fürst von Calenberg (1582–1641) |
Eduard von der Pfalz (1625–1663) |
| Great grandparents |
Elector |
King |
Emperor Leopold I (1640–1705) |
Johann Friedrich Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg (1625–1679) |
||||
| Grandparents |
Elector Maximilian II. Emanuel of Bavaria (1662–1726) |
Emperor Joseph I (1678–1711) |
||||||
| parents |
Emperor Charles VII (1697–1745) |
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|
Maria Antonia of Bavaria |
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progeny
- Son (* / † June 9, 1748 in Dresden, died after giving birth)
- Friedrich August III./I. (* December 23, 1750 in Dresden; † May 5, 1827 in Dresden), Elector and later King of Saxony, elected King of Poland and Duke of Warsaw
- Karl (born September 24, 1752 in Dresden, † September 8, 1781 in Dresden), Prince of Saxony
- Joseph Maria (born January 26, 1754 in Dresden, † March 25, 1763 in Dresden), Prince of Saxony
- Anton (born December 27, 1755 in Dresden, † June 6, 1836 in Pillnitz), King of Saxony
- Maria Amalie (born September 26, 1757 in Dresden, † April 20, 1831 in Neuburg an der Donau), Princess of Saxony
- ⚭ Charles II August (born October 29, 1746 in Düsseldorf; † April 1, 1795 Mannheim), Duke of Palatinate-Birkenfeld-Zweibrücken
- Maximilian (born April 13, 1759 in Dresden; † January 3, 1838 in Dresden), Hereditary Prince of Saxony
- ⚭ Caroline of Bourbon-Parma (born November 22, 1770 in Parma, † March 1, 1804 in Dresden), Princess of Bourbon-Parma
- ⚭ Maria Luisa of Bourbon-Parma (born October 2, 1802 in Barcelona, † March 18, 1857 in Rome), Princess of Bourbon-Parma
- Therese Maria (born February 27, 1761 in Munich, † November 26, 1820 in Dresden), Princess of Saxony
- Son (* / † 1762, stillborn)
Works
Christine Fischer's book Instrumentierte Visionen der Macht contains a detailed list of sources and works (handwritten and printed notes and texts) . Maria Antonia Walpurgis' works as a stage for political self-staging (2007).
- Operas:
- Il trionfo della fedeltá (with the assistance of Hasse and Metastasio), first performance in the summer of 1754 in Dresden. Text printing. Sheet music printing (3 volumes) Breitkopf, Leipzig 1754
- Talestri, regina delle Amazzoni on her own libretto, first performance on February 6, 1760 or 1763 in Nymphenburg. Text printing. Sheet music (3 volumes) Breitkopf, Leipzig 1765. The libretto was alsoset to musicby other composers such as Giovanni Battista Ferrandini (possibly around 1760), Johann Gottfried Schwanberger (1764) and Domenico Fischietti (1773).
- Other works:
- Text for the oratorio La conversione di S. Agostino von Hasse, 1750. A German version as a spoken drama called The Converted Augustine was published in 1753 and 1766 in the clerical stage of the Augustinian Peter Obladen from Ulm.
- further texts for cantatas by Hasse, Manna and Ristori
- musical contributions to numerous arias, pastorals, interludes, meditations and motets
- Correspondence with Frederick the Great
reception
In 1859 Amely Bölte wrote a detailed biography under the name Maria Antonia, or Dresden 100 years ago , which she herself titled a "Biographical Novel", but in the foreword expressly stated that it was based solely on traditional facts.
literature
- Christine Fischer: Instrumented Visions of Female Power. Bärenreiter, Kassel 2007, ISBN 978-3-7618-1829-9 (on Maria Antonia's musical work in Munich and Dresden).
- Marita A. Panzer: Wittelsbach women. Princely daughters of a European dynasty. Pustet, Regensburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-7917-2419-5 , pp. 135-146.
- Thomas Schilp: Abbess Maria Kunigunde von Essen, an opera singer? For the world premiere of the opera “Talestri, regina delle amazzoni” at the court of the Elector of Saxony. In the S. (Ed.): Women build Europe. International links of the Essen women's monastery. Klartext Verlag, Essen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8375-0672-3 , pp. 451-461.
- Britta Kägler: Women at the Munich Court (1651–1756). Publishing house Michael Laßleben, Kallmünz / Opf. 2011, ISBN 978-3-7847-3018-9 (on the childhood and youth of the Bavarian princess, marriage negotiations, royal household and Maria Antonia's correspondence).
- Alois Schmid : Maria Antonia Walburga, Electress of Saxony. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-428-00197-4 , pp. 198-200 ( digitized version ).
Web links
- Works by and about Maria Antonia von Bayern in the German Digital Library
- Alois Schmid: Maria Antonia Walburga . In: Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (Ed.): Saxon Biography .
- Maria Antonia von Bayern at Operissimo on the basis of the Great Singer Lexicon
- Eva Neumayr: Maria Antonia Walpurgis Electress of Saxony in the Lexicon of Music and Gender on the Internet
- Correspondence with Frederick the Great
- Maren Gottschalk : 07/18/1724 - birthday of Electress Maria Antonia WDR ZeitZeichen (podcast).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Christine Fischer 2007, pp. 50–53, with a picture of the Arcadia diploma.
- ↑ Christine Fischer 2007, pp. 428-450.
- ↑ Christine Fischer 2007, p. 422 f.
- ↑ Peter Obladen: The converted Augustine. In: Geistliche Schaubühne. Second improved edition. Matthäus Rieger and Sons, Augsburg and Leipzig 1766. Digitization at the Munich Digitization Center , p. 180 ff.
- ↑ Correspondence with Frederick the Great. Digitized from the University of Trier
- ↑ Amely Bölte : Maria Antonia, or Dresden 100 years ago. Time image. Biographical novel ( online at Google Books).
| predecessor | Office | Successor |
|---|---|---|
| Maria Josepha of Austria |
Electress of Saxony 1763 |
Amalie von Pfalz-Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld-Bischweiler |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Maria Antonia of Bavaria |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Maria Antonia Walpurgis Symphorosa of Bavaria; Maria Antonia of Saxony |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Electress of Saxony, artist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 18, 1724 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Munich |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 23, 1780 |
| Place of death | Dresden |