The fateful Mardi Gras night

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Data
Title: The fateful Mardi Gras night
Genus: Farce with singing in three acts
Original language: German
Author: Johann Nestroy
Literary source: "A tragedy in Berlin" by Karl von Holtei
Music: Adolf Müller senior
Publishing year: 1839
Premiere: April 13, 1839
Place of premiere: Leopoldstädter Theater in Vienna
Place and time of the action: The action takes place in a big city
people
  • Tatelhuber , a country tenant
  • Philipp , his son
  • Helene , his wife
  • Sepherl , maid in Philip's house
  • Raisin , maid of honor in Philip's house
  • Heinrich , in Philip's house
  • Mr. von Geck
  • Gottlieb Taubenherz , brother of Helene's deceased husband
  • Shimmering woman
  • a servant
  • Lorenz, Jakob , wood chopper
  • Katherl , Jacob's wife
  • Nani , a laundress
  • Snail, lynx , night watchman
  • Mrs. Mühlerin , a citizen woman
  • Mrs. Everl, Mrs. Regerl , herbalists
  • Market people, servants, Philip's neighbors, farmers, townspeople, laundry maids

The fateful Mardi Gras night is a farce with singing in three acts by Johann Nestroy . The play was written in 1839 and was first performed on April 13 of the same year as a “benefit performance” for Nestroy's partner Marie Weiler .

content

On the market square, Sepherl complains first to the herbist Frau Everl, then to her former employer Tatelhuber, who surprisingly comes to visit, about her misery with Helene, the wife of Tatelhuber's son Philipp:

"[...] I don't understand where such a noble woman got it all from: Trabant, Landpatsch, Trampel, those are still the best words I get." (First act, second appearance)

Sepherl's terribly jealous lover Lorenz suspects a G'spusi behind this conversation and decides to spy on her. For his part, Tatelhuber wants to dress up as a wooden woman to paint a picture of Lorenz's character. In Philip's marriage, Helene alone has the say, she lets Mr. von Geck court her and the child is completely spoiled.

While the whole family goes to a masked ball, Helene's brother-in-law Taubenherz, who is speculating on the huge inheritance, has the child of the greedy Heinrich kidnapped with the help of Jakob ( "I am the man who does everything for money" ) and Katherl. Sepherl discovers the crime too late and pursues the child robbers. Lorenz believes that she has discovered new evidence of infidelity in her absence, decides to comfort herself with the laundress Nani and argues:

"Small souls complain, generous men take another one, and the really great minds always have one in stock, as is the case with me now." (Act 3, first appearance)

Lorenz mistakenly swapped the basket with the kidnapped child for Nani’s laundry basket and Sepherl was able to have Taubenherz and his accomplices arrested by the night watchmen. The child is brought back by Lorenz, who thinks he is bringing laundry into the house. Helene, contrite, decides to accept Tatelhuber's suggestion to start a new life on an estate. Sepherl is celebrated as the real heroine, Lorenz recognizes his mistake and Tatelhuber tells him clearly:

“And I congratulate the gentleman on his pretty wife, he couldn't have made a better choice as a wood chopper, because the girl is so good, so good and patient that he can chop her wood. Viktoria, children! " (Third act, fourteenth appearance)

Factory history

The model for Nestroy's play was the drama "A Tragedy in Berlin" , which the author Karl von Holtei had submitted to the censorship in Vienna in 1834 , but which prohibited a performance. In Berlin it was initially a great stage success in 1837. Nestroy pretty much took over the plot, but wrote a different ending. From the fully pathetically exaggerated "sense of honor" acting Holteischen day laborer Franz, he turns into the equally exaggerated and honorable lumberjack Lorenz, a caricature of the sentimental, kitschy, simple Berlin boy. He is the central figure of excessive jealousy and egocentricity, but also of a radically misguided thrilling crime story. Through his art of language, Nestroy shaped the peculiarities of this figure as a proletarian who felt himself to belong to the higher.

In Nestroy’s original manuscript, a preliminary concept with a few personal names, the ending is presented differently: Lorenz offends Sepherl with his baseless jealousy of Geck and his love affair with Nani (here still written as Nanni) so much that she gives him the pass and the Tatelhuber proposing to her wants to marry for reasons of reason.

Since director Carl Carl had also taken over the Leopoldstädter Theater in addition to the Theater an der Wien , his two draft horses Nestroy and Scholz were increasingly sent separately to the stage.

In this piece, however, they are once again united, Johann Nestroy played the wood chopper Lorenz, Wenzel Scholz the tenant Tatelhuber. Furthermore, Franz Gämmerler gave the Philipp, the director Carl the Geck, Ignaz Stahl the Taubenherz, Alois Grois the Jakob and the beneficiary Marie Weiler the Nani.

For the actress Eleonore Condorussi , Nestroy first created the character of the so-called “sweet girl” Sepherl by later generations. Miss Condorussi had been active in Carl's theater since 1829, including in earlier Nestroy plays, but it was only through this role that she really became known. The Wiener Theaterzeitung read about her play:

“First of all, Dlle Condorussi deserves excellent praise from the actors. [...] The audience, carried away by her masterly game, exclaimed her [...] three times with enthusiasm. "

The Condorussi was always so successful in the next roles written for her by Nestroy, and her relationship with him was apparently so close that finally his partner Marie Weiler prevented further (main) roles and contacts.

Karl von Holtei was offended that even in northern Germany his tragedy was less valued and played than Nestroy's Viennese parody. Years later he wrote in the Almanac for Friends of Drama:

“While I have endeavored in my original to portray people from the lower classes as noble natures in spite of their gloomy fortunes, Mr. Nestroy has set himself the task of redesigning this endeavor as a sentimental and ridiculous one in his own way to denote and especially to satirize Franz's sense of honor. Perhaps because he succeeded so well, the 'Faschingsnacht' made its way over far more stages than my forgotten tragedy [...] "

Contemporary receptions

The enthusiasm of the audience was stormy, the criticism fluctuated between praise ( “perfectly healthy, fresh local image” ) and criticism for the portrayal of a child robbery in a comedy.

In Adolf Bäuerle's Wiener Theaterzeitung an anonymous author (presumably Nestroy's predecessor Carl Meisl ) wrote:

“The new piece by the ingenious Nestroy 'The fatal Faschingsnacht' causes a sensation in the sense of the word. Yesterday it was given for the third time when the house was overcrowded and the applause was again as stormy and unanimous as at the first performance. "

Later interpretations

In 1948 Otto Rommel called the play a prime example of the genre that was called a “parodying farce” in the old Viennese Volkstheater . This means that a work originally created as a parody has so much comic power that it became independent in this direction. Holtei put the "poor but honest" people in the foreground, Nestroy more than happily replaced their unnatural and uptightness with the naturalness of his people.

Earlier, in 1908, Rommel called the fateful Mardi Gras night a very successful arrangement. Although Nestroy borrowed scene by scene - sometimes even literally - something completely new emerged from it. Like any good parody, this piece can also be enjoyed without knowing the original.

In his readings of Nestroy's works in his own arrangement, Karl Kraus particularly pointed out the verbal subtleties of the short scene (act 1, act 9) between Lorenz and Frau von Schimmerglanz. The Couplet des Lorenz ( "Holzhacker-Lied" ) was performed several times by Karl Kraus; it is printed in the collection "Lyrik der Deutschen" .

literature

  • Helmut Ahrens : I'm not auctioning myself off to the laurel. Johann Nestroy, his life. Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1982, ISBN 3-7973-0389-0 .
  • Franz H. Mautner (Hrsg.): Johann Nestroys Komödien. Edition in 6 volumes, Insel Verlag , Frankfurt am Main 1979, 2nd edition 1981, 3rd volume. OCLC 7871586 .
  • Otto Rommel: Nestroys Works. Selection in two parts, Golden Classics Library, German publishing house Bong & Co., Berlin / Leipzig / Vienna / Stuttgart 1908.
  • Otto Rommel: Johann Nestroy, Collected Works. Historical-critical complete edition, third volume, Verlag von Anton Schroll & Co., Vienna 1948–1949, new edition 1962; Pp. 341-416, 708-713, 725-726.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. means Vienna
  2. in Viennese language Tatelhuber means an old man, from Tatl = Tattergreis.
  3. ^ Rommel: Johann Nestroy, Collected Works. P. 344.
  4. ^ Rommel: Johann Nestroy, Collected Works. P. 404.
  5. ^ Rommel: Johann Nestroy, Collected Works. P. 416.
  6. ^ Rommel: Johann Nestroy, Collected Works. Pp. 710-713.
  7. ^ Rommel: Johann Nestroy, Collected Works. P. 342.
  8. Ahrens: I'm not auctioning myself off to the laurel. Pp. 206-211. (for the entire section "factory history")
  9. a b Mautner (Ed.): Johann Nestroys Komödien. P. 357.
  10. ^ Rommel: Johann Nestroy, Collected Works. Pp. 709-710.
  11. ^ Rommel: Nestroys Works. S. LIV-LV.
  12. Volker Kahmen: Dear Princess: Karl Kraus and Mechtilde Lichnowsky; Letters and Documents, 1916-1958. Wallstein Verlag, 2001, ISBN 978-3-89244-476-3 ; P. 234.
  13. Lorenz (approaching her) Do your grace go for a wood?
    Shimmer gloss (looks at him elegantly over the armpit and then says to her servant) He
    say to him: No! (Goes on her way)
    Servant (to Lorenz) No, we'll take it from Greisler.
  14. Christian Wagenknecht : Lyrik der Deutschen, selected for his lectures by Karl Kraus , edition text + kritik, Munich 1990, ISBN 978-3-88377-379-7 , p. 109.