The two shooters

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Work data
Title: The two shooters
Shape: Singspiel
Original language: German
Music: Albert Lortzing
Libretto : Albert Lortzing
Literary source: Les Méprises par ressemblance by André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry
Premiere: February 20, 1837
Place of premiere: Leipzig
Place and time of the action: German small town around 1830
people
  • Amtmann Wall ( bass )
  • Karoline Wall, his daughter ( soprano )
  • Wilhelm Stark, illegitimate son of the bailiff, soldier in the 1st Rifle Battalion ( baritone )
  • Peter, his cousin ( tenor )
  • Bush, innkeeper (bass)
  • Suschen Busch, his daughter (soprano)
  • Gustav Busch, their brother, soldier in the 3rd Rifle Battalion (tenor)
  • Jungfer Lieblich, housekeeper at Busch ( alto or mezzo-soprano )
  • Schwarzbart, a dragoon, friend of Wilhelm (bass)
  • Sergeant Persch (baritone)
  • A soldier (speaking role)
  • Soldiers, neighbors, country people ( choir )

Die Zwei Schützen is a comic opera in three acts by Albert Lortzing , who was also his own librettist. The work was premiered on February 20, 1837 in the Theater der Stadt Leipzig . It was Lortzing's first great success and strengthened his intention to write more stage works for music theater.

action

The opera takes place in a small German town around 1830

first act

Image: Marketplace

It has now been ten years since Gustav Busch started his service as a soldier in the third rifle battalion. He had never been allowed to visit his home even once. But today he is supposed to return. His father is already very excited. Together with the neighbors, he looks forward to his son's return home. It doesn't take long before a soldier approaches the marketplace. But this is not the expected one, but Wilhelm Stark, the illegitimate son of the bailiff believed to have been lost. When he was recently involved in a brawl in which Gustav Busch was also involved, the two unconsciously swapped their knapsacks and with them the papers. The innkeeper happily greets his supposed son. When Wilhelm Stark spots his pretty daughter Suschen, he immediately feels drawn to her and plays along.

Second act

Now Gustav, the innkeeper's real son, is returning from his military service. How happy he is to finally be able to embrace his fiancée, the bailiff's daughter Karoline, again. This also makes her appearance, but eludes his embrace because she thinks he is a fraud. Even so, she feels drawn to him in her heart. Innkeeper Busch doesn't recognize his son in this second shooter either. Now the bailiff should decide how to proceed. He is quickly on the spot and demands evidence. In this rifleman’s knapsack there is a wallet with a document in the name of a Wilhelm Stark. All of Gustav's assurances that the papers did not belong to him fell on deaf ears. The bailiff declares the shooter arrested and arrests him in the inn's summer house.

Third act

Image: courtyard behind the inn

Karoline suffers agonies of the heart. On the one hand, she is engaged to Gustav Busch, the innkeeper's son, and does not want to dup him, but on the other hand, she feels an ever increasing desire for the imprisoned swindler. Karoline's friend Suschen Busch has no reason to be happy either. She just can't believe that her supposed brother is haunted so violently in her heart. Bailiff Wall is plagued by remorse as to whether he might not have made a mistake by arresting the second shooter. Maybe his name is actually Wilhelm Stark and is his son?

Transformation. Image: Inside the garden house

Little by little, all the protagonists penetrate Gustav's “prison”. It becomes a terrible mess. In the end, however, the confusion is resolved and the right pairs are found.

Remarks

After Ali Pascha's success , Lortzing and his two shooters convinced the music world that he is a composer to be taken seriously. Everything that many people appreciate about the later Lortzing can already be found here: lively choirs, folk - the word is not meant derogatory here - arias, songs and ensembles, comedy through scenes of confusion. Individual musical numbers should be emphasized: the chorus of the country folk at the beginning of the first act, the aria of the second shooter returning home in the second act, in which he greets the homeland and his bride in his heart, in the third act finally a tender duet between Gustav and Karoline , the septet Oh how would father scold and the hymn O silent night, in your shadow's coolness .

literature

  • The two shooters. In: Georg Richard Kruse : Albert Lortzing (= Famous Musicians. Life and Character Pictures with an Introduction to the Works of the Masters. Volume VII). Harmonie, Berlin 1899 ( online in the Internet Archive ).

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