The ghost king's diamond
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| Title: | The ghost king's diamond |
| Original title: | The magic treasure |
| Genus: | Magic posse with singing in two acts |
| Original language: | German |
| Author: | Ferdinand Raimund |
| Music: | Joseph Drechsler |
| Publishing year: | 1824 |
| Premiere: | December 17, 1824 |
| Place of premiere: | Theater in the Leopoldstadt , Vienna |
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The diamond of the ghost king is a magic posse with singing in two acts by Ferdinand Raimund with music by Joseph Drechsler and was premiered on December 17, 1824 in the Theater in der Leopoldstadt in Vienna .
content
When the magician Zephises was struck by lightning and received by Longimanus among the spirits, he left his son Eduard no will. In order to get to the father's treasures, he has to go to Longimanus' palace, which is made more difficult by some trials. So Eduard first has to climb a mountain and break off a branch from the Singing Tree at the summit. Pamphilius explains how this test came about:
- “However, so that the ghost prince would not be bothered so much, he said that from the moment no mortal was allowed to approach his palace before he climbed this mountain and, without turning around, broke off a branch from the singing tree. " (First act, fourth scene)
Eduard discovers a mysterious room in which the treasures were hidden. Only the most precious piece, a statue made of rose-red diamonds, is missing and must be requested from Longimanus. Little Genius Kolibri promises to bring him:
- "You can also take a servant with you, because you seem to me to be a very good gentleman." (First elevator, twenty-first scene)
Florian says goodbye to his bride Mariandl, Kolibri picks her up in a mail van and takes her to the magic mountain. There the guard Colophonius is waiting, who turns all who turn around while climbing into an animal. Four nymphs want to lure Eduard, a burning tree scare him off, two Greeks outsmart him, but he reaches the Singing Tree. Only Florian, who resists four kitchen maids, evades two soldiers and gets rid of a waiter, is tempted to turn around by a deceptive figure of Mariandl and transformed into a poodle.
When the two reach the royal palace, Longimanus transforms Florian back at Edward's request. He promises him the statue on one condition: Eduard has to bring him an 18-year-old girl who has never lied. As proof of this, Florian will feel comfortable in her presence, but if she has already lied, he will wriggle in pain. Florian complains about his lot:
- "See your glory, I only feel if I got a perverse physiognomy that my Mariandl will no longer look at me in her life." (Act two, fifth scene)
Eduard finds the honest amine in the "land of truth and strict custom", where the greatest liars are to be found, and falls in love with them. When he returned to the palace and pleaded with his father's ghost for help, the latter had only one simple answer:
- "I am your father Zephises and I have nothing to say to you but this!" (Act two, nineteenth scene)
When Longimanus leads Amine away as a bride, Eduard wants to prevent him, but is threatened by monsters and expelled from the palace - with the hint that the diamond statue is already in his treasury. Eduard wants to do without all the treasures in the world if he only gets amines, but in the chamber amine turns out to be his most precious treasure, because Longimanus tells him:
- “I only put you to the test if you would have preferred the money to them, if you hadn't got them in your life. There you have it now. A woman like her is the most beautiful diamond I could have given you. " (Act two, scene twentieth)
Factory history
During Raimund's time, the repertoire of the three suburban stages in Vienna (Theater in der Leopoldstadt, Theater in der Josefstadt and Theater an der Wien ) consisted mainly of magic and fairy tale games. Raimund initially followed this tradition, which had already made the work of the poets before him easier, since the intervention and the strife of good and bad spirits, the personification of virtues and vices, were gratefully and uncritically accepted by the audience as dramatic abbreviations.
The plot is based on the story of Prince Seyn el-Asnâm , as well as the story of the two sisters who envy their youngest sister , both stories from the Arabian Nights . Carlo Gozzi had worked on the first story even before Raimund and in 1826 a romantic-comic fairy opera based on this model was performed in the theater in der Josefstadt. In a self-biography supposedly written by Raimund in 1836 - the authorship is doubted by some literary historians - he wrote that he was searching through the Thousand and One Nights collection in search of new material (in a translation by Albert Ludewig Grimm 1824; not related to the Jacob brothers and Wilhelm Grimm ) and got to know Gozzi's work much later.
The first story tells that Prince Seyn el-Asnâm's father, the King of Basra , died and had the son ordered in a dream to find a marble cave with eight statues. There he is given the task of looking for a flawless bride for the Dschann (spirit king). The prince is given a mirror that will only remain clear when a girl is proven to be virgin. Despite his love for the finally found beauty, who also loves him, he hands her over to the Dschann with a heavy heart. But he is rewarded by him by receiving them as thanks for his loyalty to the bride himself.
Raimund changed practically nothing in the narrative, except for a few dramaturgical details, the transfer of the plot from oriental to Viennese and the addition of the good servant Florian Waschblau (as a “replacement” for the magic mirror) with his faithful Mariandl. Out of caution against the strict and omnipresent censorship, he changed the girl's virginity, which was required in the original, to the condition that she had never lied - as it is also in Grimm's translation, by the way. The “land of truth and strict custom” is unmistakably an allusion to the Austria of Metternich and Sedlnitzky , of censorship pressure and hypocrisy. As in the barometer makers on the magic island of rulers is as sleepy-natured parody of the Austrian emperor here I Franz drawn. From the second fairy tale of the original, Raimund had taken over the ascent of the magic mountain almost exactly to the scene.
There is a playlist of the fifth performance on December 21, 1824: Ferdinand Raimund played the role of Florian Waschblau, Friedrich Josef Korntheuer as Longimanus, Therese Krones as Mariandl, and Katharina Ennöckl as Hope. The piece was played 21 times in a month and a half to a sold-out house and continued to be a crowd puller. On November 27, 1830, Raimund chose it for his own benefit performance.
A handwritten manuscript by Raimund is kept in the Vienna Library in the City Hall in a printed cover of 33 pages, without a date, from the poet's estate.
The duo Florian-Marianne Mariandl, Zuckerkandl was almost a folk song for decades and can still be found sporadically today as a (now meaningless) rhyme.
Hans Christian Andersen , impressed by the simple honesty of Raimund's piece, arranged it for the Danish stage under the title Mere end Perler og Guld ( More than pearls and gold ). The work premiered on October 3, 1849.
Later interpretations
When Rudolf Fürst should be noted this Raymond is a further step to align the ghost level to the human world after the barometer makers on the Magic Island . The son of the magician Zephises is this link, which is reinforced by a little piquancy, namely when Longimanus indicates his former interest in the wife of Zephises and quietly ironizes Zephises' fatherhood. Raimund also brought a new image of women to the Vorstadt-Posse:
- “With the 'diamond', Raimund has taken a surprising step beyond tradition, even if he has taken a number of motifs from it. He honored two classes of society that were cruelly underestimated by his predecessors, he looked at the women and the servants with a bare eye and kind heart, unaffected by a spiteful and arrogant tradition, and he has them, which one only saw in the distortion , newly acquired for his art. "
Even Kurt Kahl notes that it was Raymond's merit, animates the old magic apparatus of suburban theater to have downright humanized. Where he has simply taken the supernatural instances from the template, the dramatic effect diminishes. With this work Raimund also learned as a poet to stand on his own two feet. The castle actor Karl Ludwig Costenoble noted in his diary:
- “With his 'diamond', Raimund spread a great shine over his already acquired fame. How far is this piece above the 'barometer maker'! "
In the figure of Florian Waschblau, Kahl sees the legitimate predecessor of the equally loyal servant Valentin in the spendthrift .
Franz Hadamowsky thinks that, unlike the barometer maker on the Magic Island , Raimund no longer followed the original text so closely. Its additions, however, come from the traditional fairy tales and local traditions, such as the fulfillment of tasks, the singing tree and the framework at the court of the spirit king Longimanus. Eduard's rehearsals have a classic model in the “fire and water test” of the libretto of the Magic Flute by Emanuel Schikaneder .
Hein / Mayer write that the comedy of the play serves the purpose of teaching, but is also used as a contrast to the allegorical plot. The colorlessness of the "serious" lovers Eduard-Amine comes from the fact that they represent both people and roles and therefore could not develop into characters. One can also see biographical aspects in this piece (Raimund's relationship to his true love and life companion Toni Wagner), also a criticism of the mendacious time morals with their obedience to subjects (Edward's way through all trials, abandoning his faithful servant, renouncing his beloved ) can be interpreted into it.
Modern performances
In April 1944, the director Günther Haenel at the Vienna Volkstheater used Raimund's play for an astonishingly clear demonstration of theatrical resistance by setting Raimund's Märchenland stylistically in present-day Nazi Germany. Gustav Manker's stage design satirized the monumental Nazi aesthetic for the Land of Truth in the play with statues in the style of Arno Breker and paraphrased the symbol of the KdF wheel and the German imperial eagle , while Eli Rolf's costumes were based on the BDM and Hitler Youth . Karl Kalwoda, the actor who played King Veritatius, even spoke in broken sentences and delivered a parody of Hitler in gestures and posture. At the end of the scene, the phrase “The future is in the air! “Added.
The play was filmed by ORF in 1992 , directed by Ernst Wolfram Marboe , the main roles were Ulrich Reinthaller as Eduard, Alexander Lutz as Florian, Wolfgang Gasser as Longimanus, Thaddäus Podgorski as Pamphilius, Guido Wieland as Zephises, Herbert Fux as Aladin and Ulrike Beimpold to be seen as Mariandl.
literature
- Rudolf Fürst (Ed.): Raimund's works. First part. German publishing house Bong & Co., Berlin / Leipzig / Vienna / Stuttgart 1908.
- Franz Hadamowsky (Ed.): Ferdinand Raimund, Works in Two Volumes, Volume I, Verlag Das Bergland Buch, Salzburg 1984, ISBN 3-7023-0159-3 .
- Jürgen Hein / Claudia Meyer: Ferdinand Raimund, the theater maker at Vienna. In: Jürgen Hein / Walter Obermaier , W. Edgar Yates , Volume 7, publication by the International Nestroy Society, Mag. Johann Lehner Ges.mbH, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-901749-38-1 .
- Kurt Kahl: Ferdinand Raimund . Friedrich-Verlag, Velber near Hanover 1967.
- Jürgen Hein / Walter Obermaier (eds.): Ferdinand Raimund. Complete Works. Historical-critical edition. Volume 1. The barometer maker on the magic island. The ghost king's diamond. Deuticke, Vienna 2014, ISBN 978-3-552-06176-7 .
Web links
- Factory data and text on ferdinandraimund.at/stuecke/diamant
Individual evidence
- ↑ Prince: Raimunds Werke , p. 55.
- ↑ Fürst: Raimunds Werke , p. 70.
- ↑ Prince: Raimunds Werke , p. 85.
- ↑ Fürst: Raimunds Werke , p. 100.
- ↑ Fürst: Raimunds Werke , p. 102.
- ↑ Kahl: Ferdinand Raimund . P. 21.
- ↑ also: History of Prince Seyn Alasnam and the King of Spirits ; Translation in Reclam Leipzig , Volume 20, p. 114 f.
- ^ Translation in Reclam Leipzig, Volume 21, pp. 170 f.
- ^ Kahl: Ferdinand Raimund , p. 43.
- ↑ see also Franz Grillparzer's work, Weh dem die der Lies, which was created from the same basic mood !
- ↑ the name Longimanus should refer to the long arms of the tall grain tester
- ↑ Facsimile of the theater slip in Hadamowsky: Ferdinand Raimund, p. 168.
- ↑ Manuscript collection of the Vienna Library in the Rathau [1]
- ↑ Entry in: Chants from: The Diamond of the Spirit King
- ↑ Andersen's letter to Grand Duke Karl Alexander (Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach) on October 29, 1849 [2]
- ^ Prince: Raimunds Werke , pp. XXX, XXXVI.
- ^ Kahl: Ferdinand Raimund , pp. 21, 41, 45.
- ↑ Hadamowsky: Ferdinand Raimund, pp. 95-96.
- ^ Hein / Mayer: Ferdinand Raimund, pp. 32–33.
- ^ Paulus Manker : "The theater man Gustav Manker . Search for traces." Amalthea, Vienna 2010 ISBN 978-3-85002-738-0
- ↑ Entry in the IMDb [3]
