The boarding school
| Work data | |
|---|---|
| Title: | The boarding school |
| Shape: | operetta |
| Original language: | German |
| Music: | Franz von Suppè |
| Libretto : | CK |
| Premiere: | November 24, 1860 |
| Place of premiere: | Theater an der Wien, Vienna |
| Place and time of the action: | A girls' boarding school around 1860 |
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The boarding school is a comical operetta in one act (two pictures) by Franz von Suppè . The play was premiered on November 24, 1860 in the Theater an der Wien and is considered to be the first Viennese operetta .
Alois Pokorny , the director of the Theater an der Wien, tried to compete with Jacques Offenbach's operettas, which was extremely successful in the Carltheater , with his own productions and commissioned his house conductor Suppé to do this.
The librettist is only given the initials C. K. and has not yet been identified. The piece can be traced back to the Opéra comique Les Visitandines (1792) by François Devienne . The boarding house residents are nuns in the template.
The piece consists essentially of a series of female singing and dance ensembles, a premonition of later revues . Due to their success, Suppé and other Viennese composers such as Ivan Zajc or Karl Millöcker received numerous commissions for similar works.
action
- 1st picture - corridor with alcove in the girls' boarding school
Brigitte, the headmistress, attaches great importance to morality in bringing up her children, but she does not have much success with her pupils. As soon as the girls are unsupervised, things are very worldly: prayer and choir singing become love songs and instead of kneeling in the choir stalls, there is extensive dancing.
An exception is Helene, who is teased by her friends because she is in love. Her friend Sophie knows what to do and arranges a rendezvous for her with her lover Karl. The two young women learn that Karl has asked Helene's father for her hand. But he will only be accepted as a bridegroom if he can show a secure job within two days.
Karl could apply to the headmistress for the position of administrator, but the chances of getting her are slim. Karl is now trying to get to this office by means of a ruse. When he and Helene are surprised by the other girls in the alcove, he secretly asks each one to meet at midnight. Amalie, Ida, Melanie, Ottilie and Sophie are delighted and promise to be in the monastery garden at midnight.
- 2nd picture - The garden of the boarding school at midnight
At midnight, Karl and his servant Florian climb over the wall into the monastery garden. Karl sneaks up to Helene, who is privy to the plan and Florian should now pretend to be Karl for girls. When Amalie, Ida, Melanie, Ottilie and Sophie secretly come one after the other to the monastery garden, they quickly notice the fraud and try to scream to drive Florian away.
Suddenly, the headmistress Brigitte appears from Helene, alarmed. She sends the girls to their rooms and wants to have Florian arrested. Then Karl appears and claims that he only staged all of this just to meet her, the headmistress. Since she likes the young man and there are no more witnesses present, she deals with Karl. At a secret signal from Karl, all of the pupils appear and scoff at the precarious situation.
Since the headmistress pleads not to violate her honor, Karl explains to the young women that he only wanted to meet the headmistress in order to apply to her for the position of administrator as quickly as possible. As proof, he shows everyone an employment contract that Brigitte only has to sign. Concerned about her good reputation, she signs the contract and Karl can now introduce Helene to everyone as his bride.
literature
- Carl Dahlhaus , Sieghart Döhring: Piper's Encyclopedia of Music Theater. Opera, operetta, musical, ballet; Vol. 6 . Piper, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-492-02421-1 , pp. 197-199.
- Leo Melitz: Guide through the operettas . Globus-Verlag, Berlin 1917, pp. 168–169.
- Franz von Suppè: The boarding school. Comical operetta in one act (2 images) . Bote & Bock, Berlin 1860.