Beatrice Dovsky

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Beatrice Dovsky (1893)

Beatrice (von) Dovsky , née Drewikowsky (also Drevikowsky), married von Vay (born November 14, 1866 in Vienna , † July 18, 1923 in Vienna) was an Austrian poet , writer and actress .

Dovsky's works include poems, short prose and fairy tales, e.g. B. "The Vienna brat," the "The ma'am," the "Twelve Tales of the Eastern March " (1913) and the travel - narration "From Penzing to Beijing", Vienna 1901. It was at the cemetery Hietzing in Vienna buried.

In 1936 Dovskygasse in Vienna- Hietzing was named after her.

Libretto Mona Lisa

Grave of Beatrice Dowsky, Hietzing Cemetery

Her best-known work is the libretto for the opera Mona Lisa , which Max von Schillings set to music in two acts and which was premiered in 1915. The conductor and composer Carl Arthur Richter used part of this as the basis for his Opus 36 “Mona Lisa. Dramatic Overture ”, a work for wind orchestra .

The libretto was written in 1913 after the reappearance of Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting Mona Lisa , which had been stolen two years earlier. The topicality and the multi-interwoven plot in the style of today's psycho- thrillers particularly appealed to the composer, and the opera was extremely popular and often performed. Today, however, it is almost forgotten.

In a supporting story, a lay brother leads a married couple on their honeymoon through a palace in Florence and tells what happened here in 1492 in a triangular story . The husband Francesco, a pearl dealer, longs for the former passion of his wife Mona Fiordalisa and he projects his longing onto the mysterious smile in Leonardo's portrait. In order to win his wife back, he made her wear pearl jewelry a lot , which she hates. When, in the frenzy of the carnival, a guest snows into the house and falls in love with Mona, Francesco sees his wife smiling again, but that doesn't apply to him. Finally, the lover ends up in the pearl safe , where he hides, some time later, however, Francesco von Mona is also locked there and suffocates as well.

During the tour of the palace, the visitor couple noticed parallels in their own life, while the lay brother believed he recognized a rebirth of Mona Fiordalisa in the strange woman. The opera's popularity is based on this on the one hand, and on the other on three double roles, to which Dovsky's model inspired the composer.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Vienna Archive Information System , Flower Berger.
  2. ^ Vienna registration form from 1911 , Vienna registration form from 1917 , Blumesberger, photo of the tombstone.
  3. ^ Vienna registration form from 1917 , ÖBL, Blumesberger, photo of the tombstone.