The return of the exile
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| Title: | The return of the exile |
| Shape: | Opera in three acts |
| Original language: | German |
| Music: | Otto Nicolai |
| Libretto : | Siegfried Kapper |
| Literary source: | Frédéric Soulié : Le proscrit |
| Premiere: | February 3, 1844 |
| Place of premiere: | Vienna, Theater am Kärntnertor |
| Playing time: | approx. 2 ½ hours |
| Place and time of the action: | England, Norton Castle, 1461 |
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The Homecoming of the Banished is an opera in three acts by Otto Nicolai based on a German-language libretto by Siegfried Kapper (largely retouched from Italian) .
action
The action takes place in England in 1461 at the time of the Wars of the Roses . Lord Arthur, the Earl of Norton, had been forced to leave his home many years ago. Believing that her husband had died, Leonore became engaged to Count Edmund. However, Arthur returns home the day before the wedding. Finally Edmund is ready to renounce Leonore and has the king pardon his rival. Leonore, unable to choose either man, chooses suicide.
Work history
The return of the exile is based on Nicolai's opera Il proscritto, composed in 1841 and based on a libretto by Gaetano Rossi , which premiered on March 13, 1841 at the Scala in Milan. For Vienna the composer reworked the opera almost completely in 1843 together with Siegfried Kapper. The first performance of the revised German version took place in the Vienna Theater am Kärntnertor on February 3, 1844. For a planned performance in Berlin, Nicolai made further changes in 1848, so that at the posthumous Berlin premiere, about 15% of the music that was played in 1841 was played Milan was played. Hector Berlioz , who had heard the Viennese version, attested to Nicolai that “… ce fut dans l'opéra de Nicolai 'Le proscrit', dont le dernier acte, admirable sous tous les rapports, place à mon avis Nicolai très-haut parmi les compositeurs ". Eduard Hanslick, on the other hand, accused Nicolai of his 1856 review of wasting his talent composing Italian operas.
The opera is based on the five-act drama Le proscrit by the French writer Frédéric Soulié (1800–1849), who was mentioned in the same breath as Victor Hugo during his lifetime , and which had its world premiere on November 7, 1839 in Paris. The action takes place there in 1817 near Grenoble, and therefore refers to the beginning of the restoration period after Napoleon's defeat and exile. Since these events in Milan in 1841 were still in temporal and spatial proximity, Rossi moved the plot to medieval England in order not to give the censors a handle for interventions. The Berlin version then takes place after Oliver Cromwell .
The re-performance in 2011 at the Chemnitz Opera House was based on the Vienna version. The Chemnitz performance relocated the plot to the present, which is easily possible since the music makes no reference to the plot epoch. In fact (any) ended civil war is only the starting point for the psychodrama that takes place in the operatic plot. Therein lies the modernity of the opera, which - despite the romanticizing title - is far removed from all German medieval romance.
The first edition of the work edited by Michael Wittmann contains both versions.
literature
- Michael Wittmann: The misunderstood main work? On the creation of Otto Nicolai's opera Il proscritto / The Exile (Milan 1841 / Berlin 1849). In: Th. Betzwieser (among others): Bühnenklänge. Festschrift for Sieghart Döhring on his 65th birthday. Munich 2005.
Web links
- Il proscritto (Otto Nicolai) in the Corago information system of the University of Bologna
- Review by Eduard Hanslick
- Information and excerpt from the performance in the Chemnitz Opera
- Information on the Deutschlandradio website
- The return of the exile. libretto