Aloisia Lange

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Johann Baptist Lampi : Aloisia Weber as Zémire in Grétry's opera Zémire et Azor (approx. 1784).

Maria Aloisia Antonia Lange , née Aloisia Weber (* between 1759 and 1761 in Zell im Wiesental ; † June 8, 1839 in Salzburg ) was a German opera singer ( soprano ) and singing teacher . She was a sister-in-law of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and one of the most important interpreters of his works.

Life

Grave site of Aloisia Lange and her sister Sophie Haibl in the Salzburg municipal cemetery .

Aloisia's exact date of birth is not certain. She was born as the daughter of Franz Fridolin Weber and Maria Cäcilia Cordula Stamm between 1759 and 1761 in Zell im Wiesental . In 1763 (or 1765) she moved to Mannheim with her family . The composer Carl Maria von Weber was her cousin.

In 1777 she met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Mannheim . At this point, she already had a good education as a singer and was considered very promising. Mozart made music with her, gave her lessons and fell in love with her. During Mozart's stay in Mannheim, she went on a concert tour with him. The composer also dedicated the concert aria Ah, lo previdi - Ah, t'invola agl'occhi miei ( KV 272), which he originally wrote for the Prague singer Josepha Duschk , to her. She turned down Mozart's bid for her hand in December 1778. Mozart, who lived in the Weber's house for a few months, continued to have close contact with the family and later married her sister Constanze .

The following year she went to Vienna and married the widowed court actor Joseph Lange in St. Stephen's Cathedral . Their first child was born in 1781. Six more pregnancies followed, each time putting Aloisia's life in acute danger. She went on concert tours, sometimes heavily pregnant. Daughter Maria Anna Sabina became an actress and singer. Son Karl Jakob became an actor and later a field war chancellor. Three of her children died early.

From 1779 she worked as a court singer in Vienna and performed with Mozart, among others. She went on several concert tours to various European cities with her husband and later with her sister Constanze, Mozart's widowed wife. Emperor Joseph II tried several times to dismiss Aloisia. The background to this is not known. In 1788 she was dismissed as court singer in Vienna, but returned to the Italian opera in Vienna in 1790.

After traveling with Constanze (1795–1796), she never came home to Vienna. Her marriage to Joseph Lange was broken at this point. Between 1796 and 1801 she was engaged at various opera houses. Based in Frankfurt am Main from 1801, she also began teaching. In 1813 Aloisia hastily fled from the Napoleonic Wars into exile in Zurich, where she continued to work as a singer and teacher.

From 1818/1819 (the exact date is unknown) Aloisia Lange was back in Vienna again. After the death of her husband in 1831 she ran into financial difficulties. Her sister Constanze helped out several times. Aloisia later moved to Salzburg, where her sister Sophie (married Haibl) lived alongside Constanze (married Nissen , widowed Mozart). Aloisia Lange died on June 8, 1839 in Salzburg, where her remains were buried in the Sebastian cemetery and in 1895 were buried in an honorary grave in the municipal cemetery .

Artistic career

In 1778 Aloisia Lange became court singer in Munich. From 1779 she was a singer at the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna and at the Burgtheater , where she enjoyed great success and was in direct competition with Caterina Cavalieri , one of the most famous sopranos of her time.

Apparently Aloisia had a decidedly lyrical, "soulful" coloratura soprano , with an exceptional range of approx. C to g '' '(i.e. a whole tone higher than the Queen of the Night !). Mozart took advantage of this in several concert or interlude arias written for her and effectively put it in the right light, such as B. in "Alcandro lo confesso" KV 294 and 295 (1778), or in the arias "Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio!" KV 418 and "No, che non sei capace" KV 419, written in 1783. During her career as a singer she became one of the most important interpreters of Mozart's works. In 1786 she was Madame Herz in Mozart's one-act opera Der Schauspieldirektor (KV 486). At the Vienna premiere of the Mozart opera Don Giovanni (KV 527) in 1788 she sang the role of Donna Anna.

Concert tours with her husband took her to Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin and Munich. Between 1796 and 1801 she had engagements in Hamburg, Amsterdam and Paris. Around 1798 she used the stage name Louise Lange . From 1801 she worked in Frankfurt am Main, from 1813 in Zurich.

Aloisia Lange in literature and theater

The Austrian playwright Felix Mitterer created the satirical musical Die Weberischen , which premiered in August 2006 in Vienna's MuseumsQuartier . The protagonists of the play are the women of the Weber family, mother Cäcilia and her daughters Constanze ( Mozart's wife ), Aloysia, Sophie and Josepha.

CD tips

Mozart: Concert Arias . Edita Gruberová , Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, originally: Teldec 1992; later: elatus / Warner-classics 2003.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Airs de Concert . Natalie Dessay , Orchester de l'Opéra de Lyon, Theodor Guschlbaur, EMI-Classics 1995.

literature

  • Christiane Schumann:  Lange, Aloisia, Louise. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Second edition, personal section, volume 10 (Kemp - Lert). Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 2003, ISBN 3-7618-1120-9  ( online edition , subscription required for full access)
  • Constantin von Wurzbach : Weber, Luise Maria Antonie . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 53rd part. Kaiserlich-Königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1886, p. 210 ( digitized version ).
  • HC Robbins Landon (Ed.): The Mozart Compendium - his life his music. Droemer Knaur, Munich 1991.
  • Harald Strebel : New sources for the stays of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart's sister-in-law Aloisia Lange, b. Weber, and Franz Xaver (Wolfgang) Mozart. In: Communications from the International Mozarteum Foundation. Vol. 50 (2002), H. 1-2, pp. 75-113.
  • Harald Strebel: Mozart's sister-in-law Aloysia Lange and her stays in Zurich from 1813 to 1819; the Zurich visit in 1820 by Franz Xaver (Wolfgang) Mozart's son. In: New Year's Gazette of the Zurich General Music Society. (Jg. 185 = on the year 2001)

Web links

Commons : Aloysia Weber  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ HC Robbins Landon (ed.): The Mozart Compendium - his life his music. Droemer Knaur, Munich 1991, p. 376 and p. 379 ff.
personal data
SURNAME Lange, Aloisia
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lange, Maria Aloisia Antonia (full name); Weber, Aloisia (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German soprano and vocal teacher, Mozart interpreter
DATE OF BIRTH between 1759 and 1761
PLACE OF BIRTH Zell im Wiesental
DATE OF DEATH June 8, 1839
Place of death Salzburg