The abduction from the Seraglio

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Work data
Title: The abduction from the Seraglio
Poster for the premiere

Poster for the premiere

Shape: Singspiel
Original language: German
Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Libretto : Johann Gottlieb Stephanie
Literary source: Belmont and Constanze, or The Abduction from the Seraglio by Christoph Friedrich Bretzner
Premiere: July 16, 1782
Place of premiere: Vienna, Burgtheater
Playing time: approx. 2 ½ hours
Place and time of the action: on the Turkish coast, mid-16th century
people
  • Bassa Selim ( speaking role )
  • Konstanze, Belmonte's mistress ( soprano / coloratura soprano )
  • Blonde, English maid of Konstanze (soprano)
  • Belmonte, Spanish nobleman ( tenor / lyric tenor )
  • Pedrillo, servant of the Belmonte and overseer of the gardens of the Bassa (tenor / performance tenor )
  • Osmin, overseer of the Bassa's country house ( bass / buffo bass )
  • Klaas, a skipper (speaking role)
  • A mute
  • Guard (speaking role)
  • Janissary Choir ( choir )
  • Guards, entourage (extras)

The Abduction from the Seraglio ( KV 384) is a singspiel in three acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart . The libretto written Gottlieb Stephanie . The first performance took place on July 16, 1782 in the Burgtheater in Vienna under the direction of the composer.

action

Konstanze, a young Spaniard, her English maid Blonde and her boyfriend, the servant Pedrillo, were separated from Konstanze's fiancé, the Spanish nobleman Belmonte, after a pirate attack and taken to a slave market . Fortunately, she buys Bassa Selim, a native of Spain, once a Christian and now a Muslim, and makes sure that they can live in his seaside palace under reasonably tolerable conditions. Belmonte received a letter from his servant Pedrillo months later and now knows the whereabouts of the missing persons. He sails to the coast indicated by Pedrillo, determined to save the abductees.

first act

Belmonte is looking for his fiancée Konstanze (Aria: “Here I should see you”). Osmin, Selim's servant, enters the garden to pick figs. Although Belmonte addresses him several times, he ignores him completely (aria: "Who has found a love"). Belmonte presses him for information (duet: “Cursed you and your song!”). Osmin is annoyed (aria: "Such run-up Laffen"). After Osmin leaves, Belmonte meets Pedrillo and they plan to free the two women (aria: “Konstanze, to see you again”).

Accompanied by a Janissary choir (“Singt dem great Bassa Lieder”) Selim appears with Constanze, whose love he woos in vain; she reveals to him that her heart is already taken (Aria of Constance: "Oh I loved, was so happy"). On Pedrillo's advice, Selim hires Belmonte as a builder, but Osmin still refuses him access to the palace (trio: "March! Troll away!").

Second act

Blonde rejects Osmin's rude advances (aria: “Through tenderness and flattery”). After a duet (“I go, but I advise you”), Osmin finally lets go of her. Blonde tries to console Konstanze in her grief (recitative and aria: “What change reigns in my soul” - “Sadness has become my loose”). When Bassa Selim demands her love and threatens her with violence, she defies him and wishes for death (aria: “Martern aller Arten”).

Pedrillo informs Blonde, who is his lover, that Belmonte is nearby and that everything is ready for the escape. Blonde is full of joy (aria: "What bliss, what lust"). Pedrillo invites Osmin to a bottle of wine in the hope of being able to get him drunk (aria: “Fresh to fight, fresh to quarrel” and duet: “Vivat Bacchus! Bacchus live!”). With this plan he succeeds in getting Osmin out of the way so that Belmonte can meet his beloved Konstanze (Quartet, Belmonte, Konstanze, Pedrillo, Blonde: "Oh, Belmonte! Oh, my life"). The two couples find each other again and plan their escape.

Third act

Belmonte and Pedrillo want to start the liberation action (Aria, Belmonte: “I build entirely on your strength”; Romance, Pedrillo: “Was trapped in Mohrenland”). Belmonte is able to escape with Konstanze at first, but when Pedrillo and Blonde want to follow them, they are caught by Osmin (aria: “Ha, how do I want to triumph”); Belmonte and Konstanze are also brought back to the garden. Bassa Selim, who recognizes the son of his mortal enemy in Belmonte, wants to sentence her to death. Konstanze and Belmonte say goodbye to life (duet: "What a fate! O torment of the soul"). The Bassa, however, shows himself to be magnanimous and gives the lovers freedom on the grounds that it would be a far greater pleasure to repay an injustice suffered with benefits than to redeem vice with vice - to the dismay of Osmin, who would have preferred a cruel execution (Finale : “I will never fail to recognize your grace”; in it: “First beheaded, then hung, then speared on hot rods”).

layout

The fact that the Bassa Selim (a speaking role) selflessly renounces the exercise of his power and gives up his claims to Constanze, has led to interpretations in the sense of Lessing's Nathan . However, the Turkish ruler is referred to in the text as a renegade ; It was only through the intrigues of Belmonte's father, which one learns about in the last act, that he was driven out of his enlightened Western existence and forced into exile in a foreign cultural area .

Instrumentation

The orchestral line-up for the opera includes the following instruments:

Mozart's Turkish music

In the overture and in numbers 3, 5, 14 and 21 the composition contains echoes of “Turkish music”, as it was probably imagined in the 18th century. The expansion of the Vienna Classical Orchestra to include instruments such as cymbals, bass drum ("Turkish drum"), piccolo and triangle corresponds to the instruments used in Janissary music . When Mozart spoke of "Turkish music", it was always about these instruments. “The symphony, the choir in the first awakens, and I will do the final choir with Turkish music”, (letter to the father of August 1, 1781). Another characteristic of Turkish music are the melodies, which are performed in unison , as well as the often used fine play-arounds, which are reminiscent of heterophony . In addition, Mozart uses the technique of terrace dynamics and shows a great willingness to modulate not only in the overture, with the major-minor change playing a special role.

Mozart had already used aspects of his Turkish music in earlier works, for example in the "Turkish March" (Allegretto in Rondo form, "Alla Turca"), the third movement of the Piano Sonata No. 11 in A major, K. 331 , as well as in the Concerto for Violin u. Orchestra No. 5, A major KV 219, third movement, Rondeau (Tempo di Menuetto, Allegro).

Work history

Emergence

Harem in the palace of the Khan of Crimea , the annexation of which by Catherine II (1774) led to the Russo-Austrian Turkish War of 1787–1792 .

The underlying story is based on the libretto for Belmont and Constanze, or Die Entführung aus dem Serail, printed in Leipzig in 1781 . An operetta by CF Bretzner . Composed by Kapellmeister Andre in Berlin . It was heavily revised and expanded by Johann Gottlieb Stephanie the Younger and Mozart, with Bretzner protesting against the annexation by Mozart. For the first time, Mozart was able to largely implement his ideas of an opera libretto.

The work is initially designed as an entertaining piece, but in many scenes it achieves great emotional depth and complexity. Due to the differentiated drawing in the arias and ensembles, the characters grow far beyond the stereotypical playfulness, such as Osmin, the comical, sinister overseer of the Pasha, who expresses his various threats in coloratura bass. With this opera Mozart opened the series of his mature masterpieces and thus finally made the step towards the dreamed of existence as an independent artist in terms of his private life situation. It is no coincidence that the main female character bears the name of his future wife Konstanze , whom he married shortly afterwards against his father's wishes in Vienna. The role of Konstanze was written for the celebrated soprano Caterina Cavalieri , and that of Osmin for the famous bass Ludwig Fischer .

The singspiel was written on behalf of Emperor Joseph II , who wanted to create a national singspiel as a counterpart to the Italian court opera. It was a great success from the start and established Mozart, who had moved from Salzburg the year before , to Vienna. According to Ignaz Umlauf's miners (1778) and Antonio Salieri's Rauchfangkehrer (1781), the kidnapping is considered the first German opera, after earlier works were almost entirely imitations and translations of foreign language productions. It became a model for later composers like Weber .

Cast of the premiere

role Pitch Premiere on July 16, 1782
( conductor : WA Mozart )
Belmonte, Spanish nobleman tenor Valentin Adamberger
Constanze, Belmonte's mistress soprano Caterina Cavalieri
Blonde, English maid of Konstanze soprano Theresia Teyber
Pedrillo, servant of the Belmonte and overseer of the gardens of the Bassa tenor Johann Ernst Duration
Osmin, overseer of the Bassa country house bass Ludwig Fischer
Bassa Selim Speaking role Dominik Jautz
Klaas, a skipper Speaking role
Janissary choir

score

The autograph of the score ended up in the Royal Library of Berlin (today the State Library of Berlin ). During the Second World War , the notes along with numerous original manuscripts were brought to Silesia to be safe from bombing. The score became part of the Berlinka in Cracow after the war . A return of the score to Berlin is controversial.

Aftermath

With Der Palast , the Finnish composer Aulis Sallinen wrote an opera that contains many characters from the kidnapping and makes the plot from Mozart's opera the starting point for a bizarre fantasy play. Also Gioachino Rossini's opera L'italiana in Algeri (1813) deals with the liberation of a beautiful woman from the power of an Oriental prince.

See also

literature

expenditure

  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: The Abduction from the Seraglio. Complete book, introduced and edited by Wilhelm Zentner, Reclam, Stuttgart 1949, reprint 1995, ISBN 3-15-002667-9 (= Reclams Universal Library , No. 2667).
  • Libretto on opera.stanford.edu

templates

Secondary literature

Web links

Commons : The Abduction from the Seraglio  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christoph-Hellmut Mahling : The kidnapping from the seraglio. In: Piper's Encyclopedia of Musical Theater . Volume 4: Works. Massine - Piccinni. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1991, ISBN 3-492-02414-9 , pp. 299-303.
  2. ↑ Cf. Constantin Floros: Mozart Studies 1, On Mozart's Sinfonik, Opern- und Kirchenmusik , Wiesbaden (Breitkopf & Härtel) 1979, pp. 46–48.
  3. ^ A b First reprint in: Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden : Die Entführung aus dem Serail, program booklet 175, season 1995/96
  4. ↑ "Who owns the Berlinka".