The wondrous shoemaker's wife

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Opera dates
Title: The wondrous shoemaker's wife
Scene from García Lorca's La zapatera prodigiosa, 1931

Scene from García Lorca's La zapatera prodigiosa , 1931

Shape: Opera in two acts
Original language: German
Music: Udo Zimmermann
Libretto : Udo Zimmermann and Lutz Eberhard Schmidt
Literary source: Federico García Lorca : La zapatera prodigiosa
Premiere: April 25, 1982
Place of premiere: Schwetzingen Palace Theater
Playing time: approx. 2 ¼ hours
Place and time of the action: In an Andalusian village, 20th century
people
  • Shoemaker's wife ( soprano )
  • Schuster ( baritone or bass baritone )
  • Yellow neighbor (soprano)
  • Green neighbor (soprano)
  • Violet Neighbor ( Mezzo-Soprano )
  • Red neighbor ( old )
  • Black Neighbor (Old)
  • Two daughters of the red neighbor (2 sopranos)
  • Sexton (mezzo-soprano)
  • Mayor (bass)
  • Don Amsel ( tenor )
  • Lad with the sash (tenor)
  • Lad with the hat (baritone)
  • Boy (mezzo-soprano, composed speaking role, can also be mastered by a child)

The miraculous shoemaker's wife is an opera in two acts by Udo Zimmermann based on the “farsa violenta” La zapatera prodigiosa (1930) by Federico García Lorca in the translation (1954) by Enrique Beck . The world premiere took place on April 25, 1982 in the Schlosstheater Schwetzingen .

action

first act

Shoemaker's house

In the middle of the stage is the completely white workroom of the shoemaker with work table and tools, a large window, a large door and further doors on the left and right. The house stands in the middle of two parallel streets that unite on the horizon. The facades of the houses are white with some gray doors and windows. Some of the houses tower above the shoemaker's house so that their residents can look down on them. Everything expresses optimism and joy.

The elderly shoemaker is married to a beautiful woman who is more than thirty years his junior and whom he had already taken in as a poor girl. The neighbors think they are lustful and depraved. But the shoemaker's wife is also dissatisfied. Her husband is solid and conventional, but she herself has a temperamental character. Her only confidante in this situation is a boy to whom she gives a doll. There is a dispute between the married couple, in which the wife holds up her husband's lost opportunities at Emiliano and others (Andalusian folk dance "Zorongo"). The shoemaker is badly hit, but in his self-pity he blames his deceased sister for the dilemma.

The red neighbor comes in with her daughters to pick up their repaired shoes. She haggles with the cobbler and ultimately pays only one peseta for his work. The shoemaker's wife calls the red neighbor a thief and snatches the shoes from her again, for which she now charges ten pesetas. After a loud argument between the two women, the daughters finally get the neighbor to leave the house. The shoemaker's wife confronts her husband for his indulgence, but he replies that he doesn't want to cause a stir. He thinks her sense of justice is provocative.

The mayor explains his views on dealing with women to the shoemaker. He himself already had four wives, all of whom he had brought completely under control by being beaten. Even the shoemaker should occasionally kick his wife or discipline him with the "stick". The cobbler admits his weakness and adds that he no longer loves his wife. When this next door warns the song “Los reyes de la haraja” (“The kings in the card game”), he becomes angry about the noise. But then she steps into the room and the mayor pays court to her. The cobbler throws him out. After another argument with his wife, he leaves the room. This takes refuge in a dream of her imaginary perfect lover Emiliano ("Zorongo").

One after the other, the feeble Don Amsel and the stubborn fellow with the sash woo the shoemaker's wife. She grossly rejects both. The shoemaker, who can no longer bear his situation, leaves the house after praying without saying goodbye. In the background two women's choirs are singing Marienlieder.

When the shoemaker's wife calls for dinner, her husband does not come. Instead, she takes care of the boy who was sent by the villagers to tell her the man has left. Before he can tell her, however, he is distracted by a butterfly that has come into the room. He chases after him and wants to follow him outside. Only when he runs out does he call the message to her. Deeply hit, the shoemaker's wife insults the neighbors who come into the house to offer her hypocritical consolation. However, she can only think of her beloved husband: “No, I will not submit!” The women finally leave the apartment.

While the shoemaker's wife sits lonely on a chair, the boy returns as if he were still chasing the butterfly. He stops and sings the song about the "beautiful butterfly". The music fades away as the scene darkens.

Second act

Tavern in the cobbler's house

Since the shoemaker's wife now has to pay for her own maintenance, she has opened a tavern in the shoemaker's house. Their relationship with other people is still problematic. The male guests, including the boy with the sash and Don Amsel, come not so much for the drinks but to admire their beauty. She struggles to fight off her requests and insists on being married to her husband until death. The boy reports that another boy sang mocking verses ("coplas") on her. She learns that the villagers hold her responsible for the shoemaker's progress. On the other hand, since she herself blamed them, she bursts into tears. She thinks of her husband dreamily.

Two groups of copla singers approach invisibly to mock them. The mayor enters. The woman asks him for help against the mockers, but he claims to have already locked some of them in prison. The boy promises to bring her his grandfather's saber as a defense. When the mayor is alone with the woman, he tries to win her over with flattery, promises and threats. The woman does not respond. A “scenic monologue” with the title “I am and remain a shoemaker's wife” describes her increasing perplexity and despair, which grows to a scream. Finally, she quickly leaves the room.

In another pantomime scene, the shoemaker disguised as a puppeteer appears, takes off his mask and kneels down devoutly. Then he looks around the room, inwardly moving, opens the window and the door to take a deep breath. He closes the door again and stops. He puts the mask back on when his wife returns. She is frightened at the sight of him, but does not recognize him. The boy announces the arrival of "traveling people" who enter the house shortly afterwards. The boy, the neighbors and the mayor also come in to watch the spectacle. The puppeteer announces the theme of the play, "life from within". It deals with the deeds of the “too quiet cobbler” and shows how to shut up chatty women. The woman feels reminded of her husband - but although the boy thinks that his voice resembles that of the cobbler, she does not recognize his voice herself. The ensuing game by the troupe tells the story of the marriage of an older saddler and his young wife, full of allusions. Suddenly a loud scream can be heard from outside: A knife stabbing nearby is putting an end to the performance. The villagers blame the shoemaker's wife again and flee their house.

The puppeteer approaches the desperate woman to comfort her. She tells him that she was abandoned by her husband, for which the neighbors were to blame for having loved him. The shoemaker comforts her with a reference to his own life story. He himself left his wife and has now returned to forgive her.

The boy reports about the stabbing: three men fought over the shoemaker's wife. Now the neighbors are determined to drive them out of the village. The men, on the other hand, demanded that more coplas be sung. The boy goes out with the woman. Meanwhile, the neighbors urge the puppeteer to leave quickly, because he is not allowed to stay in the house of such a woman. After the women have left and the shoemaker's wife has returned, the puppeteer says goodbye to her. Both wish each other luck. The woman admits that she loves her husband without limits. The puppeteer, touched, drops his mask. While the villagers are singing their threatening coplas outside, the couple hug each other.

But the happiness found again is deceptive. After a thoughtful instrumental scene during which the shoemaker sits at his desk and his wife dances awkwardly and melancholy through the room, she says: “I'm so unhappy! - With this man whom God gave me! ”The opera ends with a last pantomime in which the shoemaker's wife sinks down on a chair in resignation. The shoemaker looks at her blankly, she looks back, and both remain motionless while the light goes out.

layout

Zimmermann himself gave hints for interpretation. Accordingly, it is not mainly a "social piece" in which "a bourgeois environment breaks a marriage". More important is the "woman's soul, the self-realization of a woman". According to Sigrid Neef , the opera's “philosophical-ethical program” is a “plea for openness to every situation, feeling and thought, for the wonderful and unadjusted in every human being.”

The libretto version of García Lorca's “farsa violenta” is not just a simple arrangement through abbreviations or text rearrangements, but an adaptation in the direction of a lyrical drama that dispenses with harshness and sharp contrasts. Zimmermann found the “outwardly directed, explosive, furious figure” of the shoemaker's wife in the first act of the original as “very unpleasant” (Zimmermann 1982). The result was "one of the most beautiful, expressive women's roles of the 20th century" (Wolfgang Lange, 1982). Instead of the comedy, the “human longing” became the main theme.

Sigrid Neef wrote: "The particular beauty of Zimmermann's opera is that it gives all characters, even marginal characters, the right to be better and more meaningful than they can be under the given circumstances." Not only the shoemaker's wife is psychological More finely drawn than in the original, but also the shoemaker performing the puppeteer's performance (six- eighth notturno of the strings), the boy (butterfly song in D major) or the mayor (distorted waltz with a twelve-tone row ).

In his composition Zimmermann clearly distinguishes between “situation” and “figure”. He wrote: "The 'situation' is more or less characterized by a structural behavior, which is expressed in the orchestra, while the 'figure' is characterized by its vocal behavior." He believed that this procedure was adopted from Giuseppe Verdi . For the structures he occasionally used “certain rows with seven or nine or eleven tones,” for the figures, however, “characteristic interval tensions”.

The opera begins with the tiny lamenting motif of the falling small second, which is processed in different meters and with different characters by the strings sometimes in unison and sometimes canonically as a flute duet until it looks like the beginning of a song. The neighbors take over the “calling and singing of the instruments” initially with the character of “longing for the wonderful”, then more and more violently until a “belt of thorns and loud laughter” forms around the shoemaker's wife.

Occasionally Zimmermann used quotes from folk music to capture the “gestures of the Spanish [...] models of musicians”, in which “the essence of the characters” can also be represented. A special focus is on the “cante jondo”, an “interval intonation that constantly fluctuates between major and minor, that never engages in a tonic and gets stuck in a dominant situation.” The opera begins with this structure, and she appears three more times in the first act until the cobbler leaves. She only reappears at the end of her reconciliation. There it can also be interpreted as a “question”. The "floating tonality corresponds to the plot between comedy and tragedy, between the real and the dream."

A literal musical quote is the "Zorongo", an Andalusian folk dance, with which the carpenter recalls the shoemaker's dreams of her imaginary lover Emiliano (in scene I.4 as a canonical pizzicato of the strings with accompaniment by celesta , piano and harp or in scene I. 11 as a vocalise with flute and guitar) or her idealized husband. In the second act, the “Zorongo” is transformed into the neighbors' song of mockery.

Zimmermann designed the last two scenes of the opera in the form of “scenic monologues”. Here the two singers play on stage without singing. Your internal processes are presented exclusively instrumentally. Zimmermann wanted on the one hand to go into the procedures of modern opera directors, also to interpret overtures and interludes scenically, and on the other hand to create a connection to the end of the first act.

Some scenes contain aleatoric elements.

Instrumentation

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

Work history

The wondrous shoemaker's wife is Udo Zimmermann's fifth opera and the first to be premiered outside of the GDR. Several years apart, he received three commissions for a setting of Federico García Lorca's “farsa violenta” La zapatera prodigiosa from 1930. First, in 1971, the Dresden State Opera commissioned him to write an opera version. In 1975 ballet music was planned for the Komische Oper Berlin . However, these two orders failed because García Lorca's heirs did not release the piece for Zimmermann until 1977/78. The third order to ultimately realized opera The miraculous Schuster woman he received from the South German Radio Stuttgart after the success of his opera The owl and the Flying Princess at the Schwetzingen Festival in 1977. The libretto is based "only legitimate German paraphrase" to that of Enrique Beck . The composer and Lutz Eberhard Schmidt took on the furnishing himself. Zimmermann completed the composition in 1981. The composer Juan José Castro set the material to music in his opera La zapatera prodigiosa as early as 1949 .

The world premiere of Zimmerman's opera took place on April 27, 1982 as part of the Schwetzingen Festival with the ensemble of the Hamburg State Opera in the Schwetzingen Palace Theater . The musical director was Peter Gülke , the director was Alfred Kirchner , and the equipment was provided by Axel Manthey . The singers included Lisbeth Balslev (shoemaker's wife), Franz Grundhub (shoemaker) and Ude Krekow (mayor). The premiere was a great success, thanks to the directors (non-naturalistic style of play with clear visual signs for the inner processes) and the actors Balslev and Grundträger.

There were other productions in the same season. There were performances, for example, in Karlsruhe, Bielefeld and Leipzig (director: Günter Lohse ). A 1983 production by the Berlin State Opera (conductor: Gert Bahner , director: Erhard Fischer , stage: Wilfried Werz ; singers: Helena Holmberg, Rolf Haunstein, Bernd Zettisch) received particularly positive reviews .

The director Michael Heinicke created a version adapted to smaller theaters in Bautzen in 1985, which was shown in Meiningen, Bielefeld, Nuremberg, 1988 in Munich (on the occasion of the first Munich Biennale ), 1989 in Bonn (conductor: Zimmermann, staging: Christine Mielitz , set design: Peter Heilein; Maria Husmann, Rolf Haunstein), 1992 in Regensburg, 1993 in Klagenfurt and 1995 at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Duisburg.

Recordings

A publication of the complete opera on sound carrier is still pending (status 2017). Excerpts from the second act (scenes 7–8 and 10–11) were included in the series Musik in Deutschland 1950–2000 under the title Nach- und Nachtgesänge - Oper 1977–1987 - Works by Kirchner, U. Zimmermann, Matthus, W Zimmermann, Rihm published (CD BMG 74321 73543 2). Peter Gülke directed the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra . Lisbeth Balslev (shoemaker's wife), Franz Grundheber (shoemaker), Ude Krekow (mayor), Hildegard Kronstein-Uhrmacher (yellow neighbor), Yoko Kawahara (green neighbor), Gertrud Ottenthal (violet neighbor), Olive Fredericks (red neighbor) and Ursula Boese (Black Neighbor).

literature

  • Sigrid Neef : The wondrous shoemaker's wife. In: German Opera in the 20th Century - GDR 1949–1989. Lang, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-86032-011-4 , pp. 564-573.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Udo Zimmermann: Conversation with Fritz Hennenberg. In: Mathias Hansen (Ed.): Composing at the time. Conversations with composers from the GDR. Leipzig 1988, pp. 331-333. Quoted from Neef, pp. 568-571.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h Sigrid Neef : The miraculous shoemaker's wife. In: German Opera in the 20th Century - GDR 1949–1989. Lang, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-86032-011-4 , pp. 564-573.
  3. ↑ a b Ulrich Schreiber : Opera guide for advanced learners. 20th Century II. German and Italian Opera after 1945, France, Great Britain. Bärenreiter, Kassel 2005, ISBN 3-7618-1437-2 , pp. 170-172.
  4. ↑ Imre Fabian: Teaching fable of the human soul. In: Program of the Duisburg Opera House, 1995.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h Thomas Gartmann: The miraculous shoemaker's wife. In: Piper's Encyclopedia of Musical Theater . Volume 6: Works. Spontini - Zumsteeg. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1997, ISBN 3-492-02421-1 , pp. 809-811.
  6. ↑ The wondrous shoemaker's wife. In: Harenberg opera guide. 4th edition. Meyers Lexikonverlag, 2003, ISBN 3-411-76107-5 , pp. 1092-1093.
  7. ↑ DNB 359171990 .