Alceste (Schweitzer)

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Work data
Title: Alceste
Original language: German
Music: Anton Schweitzer
Libretto : Christoph Martin Wieland
Premiere: May 28, 1773
Place of premiere: Weimar Court Theater
Playing time: approx. 2 ¼ hours
people

Alceste is an opera in five acts by Anton Schweitzer based on a libretto by Christoph Martin Wieland . The first performance was on May 28, 1773 at the Weimar Court Theater by the company of Abel Seyler , to whom the opera's composer had been Kapellmeister since 1769. Franziska Romana Koch sang the leading role . With Alceste one tried to establish a national German opera tradition. There were German-language operas before, but they were strongly based on Italian or French traditions, including the (lost) Dafne by Heinrich Schütz or the first surviving German-language opera Das Geistliche Waldgedicht or Freudenspiel, called Seelewig by Sigmund Theophil Staden based on a libretto by Georg Philipp Harsdörffer (Nuremberg 1644), a didactic play in close proximity to the moralizing school drama of the Renaissance.

action

The material of the musical tragedy Alceste by Anton Schweitzer and Christoph Martin Wieland in five acts comes from Greek mythology, more precisely the legend about the Thessalian Queen Alcestis , who had already treated Euripides in a tragedy and which in 1767 the material of the second reform opera Christoph Willibald Gluck and Ranieri de 'Calzabigis formed.

first act

The opera begins with King Admet of Pherae lying dying in Thessaly . Alceste is very concerned about her beloved husband and sends a messenger to the Oracle of Delphi to ask if there is still rescue for her husband. The messenger returns. Alceste does not want to hear him himself and later lets her sister Parthenia tell her that Admet would have to die unless someone else died for him. Since Admet is a friend of the god Apollo , he had achieved with the Parzen that these Admets would not cut the thread of life if someone else was near him at the hour of his death. Parthenia has been desperately looking for someone willing to make sacrifices, but not even Admets father, who is an old man and already more dead than alive, could bring himself to die instead of his son. So Alceste decides to die for Admet himself.

Second act

Admet wakes up and is happy about his new found spirit. He rushes to Parthenia to ask about Alceste. She leads him to the dying queen. Despite the pleading of Parthenia and Admet not to do it, Alceste dies for her beloved husband.

Third act

Hercules comes to Admet's court to visit his old friend. When he arrives, the entire court is in mourning, and Hercules is afraid that Admet has died. But when he meets Parthenia, she explains the whole situation to him. It is clear to him that Alceste's sacrifice is a heroic act and must not go unrewarded. He decides to bring Alceste back from Hades .

Fourth act

After Hercules' departure, Parthenia tries everything to bring Admet back to life. She keeps telling him that Alceste must not have died in vain, and she also reminds him of the promise the demigod made to them. So Admet shouldn't give up hope.

Fifth act

The last act begins with a dead sacrifice for Alceste, but this is interrupted by the returning Hercules, who claims he has kept his promise. Parthenia knows immediately that he is speaking the truth, but Admet feels mocked in his pain and doubts his friend's loyalty. He announces his friendship because of this very rough joke, because he is convinced that Hercules had brought him a simple replacement for Alceste. Parthenia reproaches the demigod, but then realizes that the friend has actually kept his word and brings the grieving Admet back. He apologizes to his friend and then sees his wife. But even this still has to drive out the last doubts until they happily embrace each other.

Creation and re-performance

Alceste was not the first result of a collaboration between poet and composer: it was preceded by the ballets Idris and Zenide and Aurora . Because of his Aurora , Wieland has often been compared to the great Italian librettist Metastasio . The poet accompanies his Alceste with many commentaries, which he wrote down in parallel. Right at the beginning of his essay, Experiment on the German Singspiel , Wieland explains his intention:

" Charles Burney , whose musical travels through France, Italy and Germany caused so much attention for some time, is right to be surprised that he has never encountered a German lyric theater in any of the German lands he wandered through."

Wieland advocated the thesis that the Italian and the French opera had to be opposed to something of equal value. The goal is an "interesting kind of drama" with the main emphasis on emotion (cf. the classic catharsis of tragedy and modern sentimentality ). Wieland pursued precisely this goal together with Anton Schweitzer in their opera Alceste . At the time of Schweitzer there was no genre of a “German Singspiel ”. Anna Amalia von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel , by marrying the Duchess of Saxony-Weimar and Eisenach , wanted to establish something of this kind in Weimar : a national stage for spoken theater and opera that was exemplary. There were many forerunners, of course, but so far they had not succeeded. Until then, it was different with popular singing games such as Johann Adam Hiller's Die Jagd or Schweitzer's Dorfgala , which, however, were not exemplary nationally (and internationally). Wieland and Schweitzer set about the task of writing a real German Singspiel that could hold its own in international comparison. The Alceste is considered a milestone on the way to a German opera .

While the opera was one of the most frequently performed works on the German stage in its time, it later disappeared entirely from the repertoire of opera houses. In 1999, on the occasion of the European Capital of Culture Weimar, Stephan E. Wehr , the ACC Galerie Weimar e. V. and the visual artist Cornel Wachter put the piece back on stage 226 years after its premiere at the place of its creation, in Weimar in the Richard Wagner Hall of the Hotel Elephant Weimar. Deutschlandfunk broadcast this unique moment of the resurrection of this first-rate German cultural asset on its radio waves. In 2001 the world premiere recording by Stephan E. Wehr, the ACC Galerie Weimar e. V., Cornel Wachter and the record label Naxos. The opera was then offered worldwide under the Naxos label Marco Polo and made accessible to the interested public and academia. The Erfurt Philharmonic Orchestra performed under the direction of Stephan E. Wehr and the opera choir of the Erfurt Theater . Ursula Targler (Alceste), Sylvia Koke (Parthenia), Christian Voigt (Admet) and Christoph Johannes Wendel (Herkules) sang .

In January 2008, the Berlin classics label released another recording in which the Concerto Köln orchestra played on historical instruments under the direction of Michael Hofstetter . The roles are cast with Simone Schneider (Alceste), Cyndia Sieden (Parthenia), Christoph Genz (Admet) and Josef Wagner (Herkules). The choir of the spirits was sung in this production by the Michaelstein Chamber Choir, whose conductor, Sebastian Göring, took over the rehearsal. The opera was staged by Hendrik Müller on the occasion of the reopening of the Duchess Anna Amalia Library in the ballroom of the Weimar residential palace and recorded for DVD.

The music

In terms of style, Anton Schweitzer's music can be classified as pre-classical , but still with baroque echoes in places . The orchestra consists of strings ( violins , violas , cellos , double bass ), 2 flutes , 2 oboes , 2 bassoons , 2 trumpets , 2 horns , timpani and fondamento ( harpsichord ). In addition to the four main actors, this opera also requires a four-part mixed choir (SSTB).

The structure is strongly based on the Italian and French operas with an overture / sinfonia and a series of arias and recitatives , which are more like accompaniment recitatives . The overture, which is kept entirely in the minor key, already resonates with the ominous undertone that underlies the entire piece and never disappears entirely.

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