The Schuhu and the Flying Princess (Opera)

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Opera dates
Title: The Schuhu and the flying princess
Shape: Opera in three sections
Original language: German
Music: Udo Zimmermann
Libretto : Udo Zimmermann, Eberhard Schmidt
Literary source: Peter Hacks : The Schuhu and the flying princess
Premiere: December 30, 1976
Place of premiere: Large house of the Dresden State Opera
Playing time: approx. 2 ¼ hours
Place and time of the action: House of the Tailor, Coburg-Gotha, foot of a mountain, Mesopotamia, Kingdom of Tripoli and Holland, fairytale time
people
  • The Schuhu ( baritone )
  • The flying princess ( soprano )
  • Man in tailcoat (conductor, speaking role)

The following twelve actors also take on the roles of villagers, guards, snails, spinach plants, warriors, 10,000 scholars and sparrows

  • First soprano, tailor's wife
  • Second soprano, 1st scroll
  • Third soprano, 1st spinach plant
  • First old , neighbor
  • Second alto, second snail
  • Third old, second spinach plant
  • First tenor , mayor, scholar, warrior
  • Second tenor, Supreme Snail Shepherd, Schuhuloge
  • Third tenor, first spinach gardener
  • First bass , tailor, King of Tripoli
  • Second Bass, Emperor of Mesopotamia
  • Third bass, Duke of Coburg-Gotha, Starost of Holland

The Schuhu and the flying princess is an opera in three sections by Udo Zimmermann (music) with a libretto by Udo Zimmermann and Eberhard Schmidt based on the fairy tale Der Schuhu and the flying princess by Peter Hacks . It was premiered on December 30, 1976 in the Great House of the Dresden State Opera .

action

Peter Hacks' fairy tale shows, under the impression of the separation of mankind into two social systems by the " Iron Curtain ", the utopian idea of ​​a bird that can easily fly over the borders to form its own opinion and ultimately to a heavenly place on a mountain peak search. In the opera version this turns into a "parable about longing for love and happiness in anachronistic conditions".

A poor tailor's wife has her tenth child. Unexpectedly, it is not a baby, but an egg from which the "Schuhu", a kind of bird person, hatches after seven months. This possesses magical powers through which he can "make a lot out of a little". The Schuhu initially behaves inconspicuously, but then the mayor learns of his skills and buys him from his father. Since the Schuhu also increases everything bad, the mayor quickly dislikes him again. His parents no longer take him in either. The Schuhu goes on a hike to look for a new master. After a rebuff at the court of Coburg-Gotha, he was finally given a position as a night watchman in the seventeenth imperial garden of the Emperor of Mesopotamia, who was at war with his brother, the Grand Duke of Coburg-Gotha. The Schuhu lures the flying and singing princess of Tripoli by playing on his night watchman's horn. Even before they meet for the first time, the two fall in love. Both the emperor and the grand duke court the princess because they need her father as an ally against their respective brother. However, the princess declares herself for the Schuhu. Thereupon the Emperor and Grand Duke allied to get their rivals out of the way. The Schuhu defeats their united armies in a sea battle and can finally marry the princess in Tripoli. After the death of their father, they rule the country together, but after a while boredom spreads. The princess succumbs to the seductive arts of the star east of Holland and follows him to his homeland. However, since this unnecessarily restricts her freedom, she soon longs for the Schuhu again, calls this with her singing and moves with him to a paradisiacal place on a mountain top.

The following table of contents of the opera is based on the information provided by Czerny, Neef, Kloiber, Harenberg and Reclam as well as some details from the article in the Tamino Klassikforum.

First section: "The Birth of Schuhu"

Scene 1. It was a poor tailor. The tailor invites relatives and friends to mark the upcoming birth of his tenth child. The mayor of the village is to become a godfather.

Scene 2. The guests arrive. The tailor gets a beer barrel for the arriving guests.

Scene 3. The birth of the Schuhu egg. The mayor gets drunk and falls asleep snoring. When the tailor stuttered and presented the result after the birth of his wife, the guests were shocked - it was an egg. In the confusion that follows, the tailor drops it in shock. It rolls under a cupboard. The mayor, who has now woken up again, asks about his sponsored child. The tailor then tells him about the event. The mayor feels mocked by the laughing guests.

Scene 4. The mayor seeks revenge. The mayor leaves the house threateningly loud ("This puddle calls for revenge, terrible and a thousandfold").

Scene 5. Cleaning up next spring. The egg was found while cleaning the house seven months later. The tailor wants to use it as a darning egg , but as he puts it in his sleeve, a voice sounds and gives instructions on how to hatch it: it must be placed in boiling water and then opened by the blacksmith.

Scene 6. The tailor walked to the fountain (pantomime). The tailor's wife and the neighbors tell how the tailor boils the egg in the well water and smashes it with the biggest hammer on the anvil.

Scene 7. Break the shells. The "Schuhu", an intermediate creature between bird and human, hatches from the broken egg and immediately calms his unhappy father: He will remain hidden from people, because everyone will mistake him for a tailor's dummy.

Scene 8. The tailor sees his reputation threatened. Followed by the villagers' shouts of "shame", the tailor hurries home with the Schuhu hidden under his coat. Since the door is locked, he has to wait for his wife to let him in.

Scene 9. So Schuhu stood in the room and stood still on his spot. The tailors and their neighbors are amazed at the behavior of the Schuhu, who rolls his eyes and thinks about the world. The mayor is still calling for vengeance in the distance.

Scene 10. The mayor's revenge. The mayor orders a coat for the tailor to make from a hand-sized piece of cloth. If he does not accept, he is threatened with death. The mayor is happy about his revenge in front of the house, which has become a "matter of the heart" to him. But the Schuhu conjures up a large cloth from the small rag, and this is how the tailor succeeds in doing the job. When the mayor receives his coat, he insidiously demands the remnants of the fabric back. The tailor hands him a thick bale of cloth and gives him back a whole ducat for the heller he had paid . When asked about his secret, the tailor hesitantly replies: “I have a shoe. It makes a lot out of a little. "

Scene 11. He makes a lot out of a little. Now that the mayor knows, he naturally wants the Schuhu for himself. He buys it from the tailor for a hundred ducats. The Schuhu itself seals the contract. On the way he warns the mayor of the possible negative consequences of his gift, because the bad will also increase. For example, he could drown in a drizzle or die of a slap in the face of his wife. Horrified, the mayor chases the Schuhu away and hurries home through the rain, where his wife receives him with a cuff. But the tailor also casts off his “false son”, who is smarter than the authorities. The disappointed Schuhu sits down crying on the doorstep.

Second section: "The migration of the Schuhu (1st part)"

Scene 1. Farewell to the hometown. At night the Schuhu leaves his home to look for a new master. At dawn he approaches the castle of Coburg-Gotha.

Scene 2. Coburg-Gotha, the Schuhulog scene. The Schuhu wants to introduce himself to the duke. A guard fetches the "Grand Ducal Court Shoelog" who greets him and assesses his suitability. But the Schuhu does not pass the exam because he does not know the Schuhu language. He is chased away as a "tailor".

Scene 3. The prince pantomime. One of the actors tells of the arrival of the Schuhu in Mesopotamia. There the emperor lies at war with his brother, the Grand Duke of Coburg-Gotha, because of the color of their beards. That of the emperor is red, that of the grand duke green. The emperor uses red snails to produce the respective color, while the duke uses spinach. However, the snails have broken the limit to eat the spinach. "The war arose from things like this."

Scene 4. The condemnation of the mountain. On the road, the Schuhu meets the emperor and his entourage. As a precaution, he hides behind a mountain and watches as the emperor has the mountain snail-herder accused the mountain. Since the mountain does not defend itself, the verdict is: It will be "wiped out [...] from the present and all future" because it stands in the way of the army and brought down the emperor's horse.

Scene 5. The execution of the sentence and the emperor's laughter. Soldiers remove the mountain and layer it next to it at the same height. The Kaiser gets a fit of laughter at this sight.

Scene 6. On the way to the capital. The Schuhu has joined the emperor's entourage. He accompanies the march to the capital with an organ organ. His music gradually turns into a slow waltz. When he finally steps before the emperor to offer him his services, he lets go of the crank of the organ organ. The music continues to play until his hand signal.

Scene 7. The riddles of Schuhu. When asked by the emperor about his abilities, the Schuhu replied, “I can see at night, solve all the puzzles and give good advice.” When the Emperor points out that he already has ten thousand scholars, the Schuhu says he is smarter than them all. The emperor allows him to ask his people three questions. First the Schuhu asks what comes out of a white ball and a black one. Nobody knows the answer - it is the Schuhu himself who hatched from an egg and will go into the black earth after his death. The second question - what only comes about when it is seasoned, boiled and then hardened - no one can answer either. Again, he himself is the answer. The third question is a trick question: what falls from the sky in winter and melts in your hand? The scholars answer spontaneously: “That's you!” - but “a snowflake” would be correct. After this successful rehearsal, the emperor praises the Schuhu, hires him as a night watchman in the seventeenth imperial garden and gives him a horn.

Scene 8. The horn concert (echoes). The Schuhu takes a close look at the instrument and begins to play on it. An echo takes up its melody counterpoint.

Scene 9. The Horn Concerto and the Kingdom of Tripoli (simultaneous scene). The horn tones fly far into the Kingdom of Tripoli, where they inspire the "flying princess". She tries to sing the melody.

Scene 10. The flight of longing. The princess's yearning becomes so irresistible that she flies to Mesopotamia. Before the two see each other, their singing is superimposed with the echo tones of Schuhu. The scene turns into the imperial garden. It is evening. The Schuhu hangs his instrument on a hollow tree and lies down in it to sleep.

Scene 11. What a wonderful song. The Schuhu was awakened by the singing of the princess. He thinks it's beautiful and climbs out of the tree to look around for the singer. But he cannot find her in the dark. Since the tones come from above, he rises into the air singing. Meanwhile the princess has arrived at his tree, where she no longer meets the Schuhu. She is just as fascinated by his singing as he is by hers. In the early morning she flies back to Tripoli. She didn't find the Schuhu. Nevertheless, both fell in love.

Scene 12. The two realms. The two warring brothers realize that their armies are equally strong and that they cannot defeat each other militarily. Both discuss with their respective advisers - the Emperor of Mesopotamia with the Supreme Snail Shepherd and the Grand Duke of Coburg-Gotha with the First Spinach Gardener. Both are advised to marry the flying princess in order to forge an alliance with her father, the wealthy king of Tripoli. Snail herders and spinach gardeners hurry to Tripoli as courtiers.

Third section: "The hike of the Schuhu (2nd part)"

Scene 1. The courtiers' race. Despite their best efforts, the snail herder and the spinach gardener reach Tripoli at the same time while the king is taking a nap.

Scene 2. The Reigen (The King's Dreams). The king wakes up to the princess’s distant song

Scene 3. The courtship. The two courtiers ask the king for the hand of his daughter for their respective rulers. Lost in thought, he accepted both applicants. Since this is not possible, he leaves the decision to his daughter. But she only wants to marry the one to whom her first and last thoughts apply - the singer and horn player from the emperor's seventeenth garden. When the two rulers heard of the decision, they immediately knew that the Schuhu was their rival.

Scene 4. The situation becomes more and more complex. Both rulers recognize that they can only take action against the Schuhu together. On the advice of their officials, they decide to write "fraternal letters".

Scene 5. The letter dictation. The emperor and grand duke dictate identical letters to their ministers. Then they go with their armies to the border between their realms.

Scene 6. Against the Schuhu. The brothers swear peace to one another until the Schuhu is caught, fried, and eaten. A brief dispute about which spices to use can be settled with the help of the ministers.

Scene 7. Seventeenth Imperial Garden at Ctesiphon. The Schuhu sings again in the garden. When he hears the princess's voice from afar, he decides to look for her.

Scene 8. Pursue the culprit. Soldiers from both parties search the garden for the Schuhu. But the "enemy" has already left. The emperor assumes that he is on the way to Tripoli.

Scene 9. The naval battle. The Schuhu is sailing across the Mediterranean on a ship when the pursuing fleets of the two rulers attack. But he can repel the boarding soldiers with his beak and hurl the cannonballs fired at him back and thus sink the enemy ships. Finally the emperor throws his largest ship at him. The Schuhu falls overboard, but emerges again and in return throws an island onto the enemy fleet. All warriors perish. Only the two rulers survive by holding on to a wooden spoon that drifts past.

Scene 10. Much wickedness and much strife end in the righteousness of the sea. The Schuhu drags himself to the organ organ and turns the crank. All performers gather and sing vocalises. New life awakens.

Scene 11. Exaggeration of feelings. The Schuhu finally meets the beloved princess in the palace of the King of Tripoli. The encounter is so impressive that they both faint in love. The king wakes her up with a pour of water from a watering can. Both admire each other's beauty. They hug and kiss and then withdraw, hugging each other. The king announces the wedding.

Scene 12. So great was the weight of her love that it almost breaks her heart. For the celebration, all actors gather one after the other for a large fugal ensemble.

Scene 13. Your love's weight breaks apart. After the Schuhu and the princess lived together for a while, their father dies. A narrator tells the audience that there was another “great potentate on earth” at that time, the Stareast of Holland. During a trip around the world, he comes to visit Tripoli on one of his many ships.

Scene 14. The Starost of Holland. The star host sits in silence next to the reading couple. The princess asks him a few questions about his trip, which the Starost answers very briefly. The Schuhu says goodbye sleepily.

Scene 15. One oath too many. The star host prepares a sandwich, of which he gives half to the princess. She goes into the bedroom to assure the Schuhu of her love and loyalty. She does this three times. The Schuhu believes that she no longer loves him, but will surely love him again one day. He is leaving. The princess remains crying. Three days later she married the star east. The two move to his homeland in Holland.

Scene 16. That was a good breakfast. The Starost praises his wife. But when she wants to fly again, he forbids her and ties her to a large Edam cheese.

Scene 17. I'm the flying princess. The princess sings vocalises to reach the Schuhu. In the breaks she always waits for an echo. Finally the horn can be heard in the distance, slowly approaching. A flock of birds eclipses the sun for a while. When it got light again, the Schuhu arrived to free the princess. You can't see anything of the cheese.

Scene 18. I think I want (finale). The Schuhu tells the princess of his experiences since the separation: He was no longer accepted in his home village, where his father had now taken over the office of mayor. Coburg-Gotha and Mesopotamia had perished because after the death of the soldiers nobody took care of the spinach plants anymore and the snails died of starvation. In a forest, the Schuhu met the former emperor and his brother, who live there together as poor charcoal burners. At last he discovered a heavenly place on the top of a large mountain, where people live peacefully "on a few trees with peaches, almonds and olives". The princess and the Schuhu make their way to this mountain together.

layout

orchestra

The opera requires two identical chamber orchestras with the following instruments:

Additionally required:

The 34 musicians and the technician operating the tape play on stage and also have scenic actions.

music

The opera is well composed and divided into a total of 42 scenes.

In contrast to the spoken theater version, there is no longer an explicit narrator in the opera version. Its role is transferred to the music (including the organ grinder) and distributed among the various actors. In addition to their actual stage roles, they have the task of telling and commenting on the plot and also help operate the stage. Their transformations between the respective functions also take place on stage and are part of the action. The same applies to the orchestral musicians, whose distribution between two orchestras symbolizes the division of the world into the spheres of Coburg-Gotha and Mesopotamia. They rebuild the mountain to be removed (II.5) as a sound sculpture.

Zimmermann described the structure of the organ as follows:

“Four children sit in an organ organ and play the recorder. By slightly adjusting the mouthpieces, you get an almost typical organ organ sound. The organ music often intones morality music, but is also used counterpoint (horizontally and vertically) to the ensemble and orchestral part and take on very different structures of the music. The organ organ acts on the orchestra and on the other hand receives impulses from there; it is part of the great dimension of music, which spreads on all levels and holds everything together. "

- Udo Zimmermann : Conversation with Fritz Hennenberg

Zimmermann uses sound transformations for the fairytale music of Schuhu:

“It is not about electronic music, but rather the sounds and tones recorded by the usual orchestral instruments, which are colored, alienated and transformed by means of ring modulation and sinus generators. This results in new sound qualities, which nevertheless correspond to the conventional orchestral sound [...] "

- Udo Zimmermann : Conversation with Fritz Hennenberg

These special sounds, generated by technical means, as well as the echo and simultaneous effects, belong to the sphere of the Schuhu and the princess. Another technique that has been used several times is vocalize . It is used for the first time at the beginning of the opera in the tailor's room, when the villagers sing a ten-part canon with large melodic arcs at wide intervals in view of the strange Schuhu.

Zimmermann deliberately uses unconventional composition methods to illuminate the figures and events more intensively. He caricatures “petty bourgeois philistines” with the help of traditional formal models. The mayor's calls for revenge are designed in a sequence-like manner, and the subsequent laughing choirs are polyphonic ensemble movements like in the Baroque era. On the occasion of the sanctimonious reconciliation of the enemy brothers, the two singing saws play the folk song You, you are in my heart . Also aleatoric elements are used, and the expressive possibilities of the singers ranging "from recitative Parlando over rhythmically fixed speaking, whispering and hissing through to Cantilena and ten-part vocalise canon".

Work history

The Schuhu and the flying princess is Udo Zimmermann's fourth opera. It was created between 1972 and 1975 on behalf of the Dresden State Opera .

Zimmermann wrote the libretto himself together with the then Dresden dramaturge Eberhard Schmidt. It is based on the drama version of the fairy tale Der Schuhu and the Flying Princess by Peter Hacks , which was published in 1964 in the literary magazine Sinn und Form (issue 2). A little later, the author created the spoken theater version of the original prose fairy tale together with the director Uta Birnbaum . It was first performed on April 29, 1966 by students from the State Drama School in Berlin (including Hermann Beyer as Schuhu and Alexander Lang as narrator) in the Berlin workers' theater "bat".

Zimmermann later recalled working with Peter Hacks. He occasionally gave advice over the phone, and at the end there was a joint review of the entire work on the piano. In conclusion, Hacks said that his piece had not been damaged “in terms of its ethical aim and substance”, although the original character had completely changed. Zimmermann explained this by stating that the focus was on the Schuhu / Princess dream of happiness. "The worlds traveled through (or 'flown through') turn out to be uninhabitable to the Schuhu, the habitable world must first be discovered."

The opera premiered on December 30, 1976 in the Great House of the Dresden State Opera. The production was done by Harry Kupfer and the set by Peter Sykora . Max Pommer was the musical director . Jürgen Freier and Helga Termer sang in the title roles .

Production proved extremely difficult for those performers who were not familiar with this form of musical theater. The singers accepted the challenge better than the instrumentalists, who referred to acoustic problems and, contrary to the wishes of the composer, played in the orchestra pit at the premiere instead of taking part in the scenery.

Despite these difficulties, like opera, it has been well received by both audiences and critics from the start. It was played many times in East and West Germany and in other European countries. Guest performances with the cast of the premiere were in 1977 in Berlin (music biennale) and Budapest (music festival weeks), 1978 in Hamburg (300 years of opera in Hamburg), 1979 in Vienna (festival weeks) and 1981 in Zagreb (music biennale). Further performances took place in Darmstadt in 1977 (director: Kurt Hones; also as a guest performance at the Schwetzingen Festival ), Greifswald 1978, Bielefeld 1979, Frankfurt / Oder 1980, Gera 1981 and Cottbus 1983, at the Gärtnerplatztheater Munich 1986, in Lübeck 1990, in Nuremberg 1991 as well as in Prague and Zagreb. Harry Kupfer staged the opera in Amsterdam in 1983. In 1983 Kurt Hones also brought the opera to the Duisburg Deutsche Oper am Rhein (production: Kurt Horres , stage: Ruodi Barth ). Udo Zimmermann himself conducted a production by the Lübeck Theaters in 1990.

Around this time, interest in the work waned. A certain “fairytale pseudo-simplicity” was criticized. Wolfgang Schreiber wrote in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on June 14, 1988 that “Udo Zimmermann provided his audience in the 1970s with a compendium of what the experimental avant-garde could do at the time.” But all these modern ones Means work fine here. Detlef Gojowy wrote in 1987: “There is actually no sound device of the experimental avant-garde: no glissando, no electronic sound alienation, no leaving the bel canto region, no multiplay and no sound textile that cannot be completely meaningfully integrated into dramaturgical contexts. ( Hans Werner Henze also used these means in a similar way .) “After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the political background was no longer relevant.

Zimmermann created an abbreviated two-hour version of the opera for the 1995 Salzburg Festival , the International Summer Academy Mozarteum Salzburg , the Leipzig Opera and the Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk . It premiered on August 10, 1995 in the large studio of the Mozarteum in Salzburg. The production was by Michael Heinicke and Elisabeth Clarke, the stage and costumes by Stefan Wiel. The composer was the musical director. The title roles were sung by Henryk Böhm and Anna Maria Pammer .

The next performance took place in 2016 as part of a studio production of the University of Music and Theater "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy" in Leipzig in the "Black Box" of the university.

Recordings

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Sigrid Neef : German Opera in the 20th Century - GDR 1949–1989. Lang, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-86032-011-4 , pp. 554-563.
  2. ↑ a b c Peter Czerny : Opera book. Henschelverlag Art and Society, Berlin 1981, pp. 497–500.
  3. ↑ a b c Wulf Konold : The Schuhu and the flying princess. In: Rudolf Kloiber , Wulf Konold, Robert Maschka: Handbuch der Oper. 9th, expanded, revised edition 2002. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag / Bärenreiter, ISBN 3-423-32526-7 , pp. 891–893.
  4. ↑ a b c d The Schuhu and the flying princess. In: Harenberg opera guide. 4th edition. Meyers Lexikonverlag, 2003, ISBN 3-411-76107-5 , pp. 1090-1091.
  5. ↑ The Schuhu and the flying princess. In: Reclams Opernlexikon (= digital library . Volume 52). Philipp Reclam jun. at Directmedia, Berlin 2001, p. 2326.
  6. ↑ Manfred Rückert: Detailed table of contents based on the piano reduction of the opera in the Tamino Klassikforum, accessed on October 1, 2017.
  7. ↑ a b c d Ulrich Schreiber : Opera guide for advanced learners. 20th Century II. German and Italian Opera after 1945, France, Great Britain. Bärenreiter, Kassel 2005, ISBN 3-7618-1437-2 , pp. 169–170.
  8. ↑ a b c Udo Zimmermann: Conversation with Fritz Hennenberg. In: Mathias Hansen (Ed.): Composing at the time. Conversations with composers from the GDR. Leipzig 1988.
  9. ^ Program leaflet for the world premiere on December 30, 1976 in the SLUB Dresden , accessed on October 2, 2017.
  10. ↑ Detlef Gojowy :  Schuhu and the flying princess, The. In: Grove Music Online (English; subscription required).
  11. ↑ Program details for Der Schuhu and the Flying Princess in August 1995 , accessed on October 2, 2017.
  12. ↑ The Schuhu and the flying princess. Program details from November 5, 1995 in the Leipzig Opera , accessed on October 2, 2017.
  13. ↑ Michael Ernst: The Schuhu - a coherent piece of time. Review of the Dresden performance in 2016. In: Musik in Dresden from February 3, 2016.
  14. ↑ Udo Zimmermann. In: Andreas Ommer: Directory of all complete opera recordings (= Zeno.org . Volume 20). Directmedia, Berlin 2005, p. 24341.