The bride of Messina

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Data
Title: The bride of Messina or the hostile brothers
Genus: A tragedy with choirs
Original language: German
Author: Friedrich von Schiller
Publishing year: 1803
Premiere: March 19, 1803
Place of premiere: Weimar Court Theater
people
  • Donna Isabella , Princess of Messina
  • Her sons:
    • Don Manuel
    • Don Cesar
  • Beatrice
  • Diego
  • Messengers
  • Choir consisting of the retinue of the brothers
  • The elders of Messina do not speak

The Bride of Messina or the hostile brothers is a drama by Friedrich von Schiller , to which the author has given the genre designation “A tragedy with choirs ”. The first performance took place on March 19, 1803 in Weimar ; Schiller's nine-year-old son Karl played the role of a page. After the negative reactions to the first performance, it was long considered inferior to the other Schiller dramas and placed in the background. Even today it is one of Schiller's lesser-known dramas.

Recourse to antiquity

Schiller tried to combine the ancient with the modern theater in the bride of Messina . The subject matter of the piece follows the tradition of the great Greek tragedy of Euripides or Sophocles . Like its ancient models, the drama ends with the demise of the entire race. The use of the choirs is intended to underline the ancient element. Schiller chose Sicily as the setting , a place where ancient and modern times, Christianity and paganism meet.

The choir

Don Manuel from the Schiller Gallery,
engraving from Neumann to Ramberg, around 1865
Don Cesar from the Schiller Gallery ,
steel engraving by Geyer after Ramberg , around 1865

Schiller prefaces his drama with a foreword on the use of the choir in tragedy , in which he justifies and justifies its introduction. The choir was supposed to bring life to the language and calm to the action and to act as a link between the sensual and the ideal, thereby creating real poetry . In fact, the rigidity of the choir was one of the criteria that led to the negative rating of the drama. In a letter to Achim von Arnim in 1803, as can be read in the epilogue to the Bride of Messina in the edition given below, Clemens Brentano expressed himself as follows: “The extremely stiff choir has the same effect as in Catholic churches the repetition of half the Lord's Prayer from the community . ”(Cf. Schiller: Braut, p. 155). The reference to the history of reception shows the difficulties that the piece presents. Because in 1814 Brentano had completely changed his view: “The whole thing is almost architectural and stone; but there are sounding stone images, memnon columns of the old world, which sound because (...) the wonderful aurora of modern (...) art (...) enlivens them magically ”(Brentano, quoted from Oellers, p. 282).

The choir does not form a unit, as Schiller theoretically advised, but is divided into the following of the warring brothers and sometimes actively intervenes in the event through speeches or conscious silence. This is how it differs from its ancient model. And Brentano has "shown that it is possible not only to trace the intentions of the poet, but also to give their implementation the highest appreciation" (Oellers, p. 291).

action

Donna Isabella
Schiller Gallery, Ad. Neuman to Ramberg
Beatrice from the Schiller Gallery
Steel engraving around 1859 from Schultheiss to Ramberg

The play begins in the Palace of Messina , where the recently widowed Princess Isabella and her two warring sons, Don Manuel and Don Cesar, who have reconciled after a long argument, live. After the dispute is settled, Isabella reveals to the two that they still have a sister who until then had grown up in a cloister, but who she now wants to lead back to the palace.

Isabella had given the girl to a convent to care for, although the late king ordered her to have been killed after she was born. The father had given this order on the basis of a dream, which a star-savvy Arab interpreted in such a way that the future daughter would bring about the downfall of the entire race.

But Isabella herself had another dream, which she had a Christian monk interpret. He assured her that the daughter would one day unite her two warring brothers in love. Since Isabella attached more importance to the Christian interpretation, she saved the child and kept it hidden.

Unknowingly, however, both Don Manuel and Don Cesar have already met their sister Beatrice, and both have fallen in love with her without knowing their identity or knowing each other's love. Don Cesar finally finds his brother in a deep embrace with Beatrice and stabs him out of jealousy.

When the origin of Beatrice is clarified by Queen Isabella after Don Manuel's murder, Don Cesar decides to atone for his crime by suicide - and neither his mother, his newly won sister, nor the choir can dissuade him from this act.

output

  • Friedrich Schiller: The bride of Messina or the hostile brothers. A tragedy with choirs , Reclam-Verlag, Stuttgart 1997. - Setting by Haydn pupil Neukomm .

literature

  • Gerhard Kluge : The bride of Messina , in: Walter Hinderer (Hrsg.): Schiller Dramen. New interpretations , Stuttgart 1979, p. 242ff.
  • Matthias Luserke-Jaqui : Friedrich Schiller , Tübingen 2005.
  • Gotthart Wunberg : The bride of Messina or the hostile brothers , in: Manfred Kluge and Rudolf Radler (Hrsg.): Major works of German literature. Individual presentations and interpretations , Munich 1974, p. 273.
  • Norbert Oellers: The bride of Messina . - In: Ders .: Schiller. The misery of history, the splendor of art. Stuttgart: Reclam 2005, pp. 269-291.
  • Peter-André Alt: Friedrich Schiller . 2nd Edition. CH Beck, Munich 2009, pp. 105-111.

Web links

Commons : The Bride of Messina  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Peter-André Alt: Friedrich Schiller . 2nd Edition. CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-50857-8 , p. 107 .