Felicitas Agnesia Ritz

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Felicitas Agnesia Ritz ca.1780
, unknown artist

Maria Felicitas Agnesia Ritz , also Maria Felicitas Agnesia Rietz and Felicitas Agnese Ritz (born March 11, 1757 in Würzburg , † August 24, 1835 in Schwerin ) was a German opera singer (soprano). From 1778 to 1788 she appeared as “Mad. Benda ”, from 1789 as“ Mad. Heine ”(also Heyne ).

Life

Felicitas Ritz received singing lessons from the Würzburg court tenorist and Kapellmeister Dominicus Stephani, who later became the husband of her older sister Sabine Ritz-Stephani. At the age of 14 she made her debut in Amsterdam, just as successfully a little later at the Cologne Theater. In 1778 she became a member of the Seylerschen Schauspielgesellschaft in Hanau and married their violinist and concertmaster Friedrich Ludwig Benda , son of the well-known composer Georg Anton Benda .

After the company at the end of 1779 in Mannheim had dissolved, the couple went on Benda Gotha and Leipzig to Berlin to the Döbbelinsche Theater : Here "Mad shone. Benda “especially in bravura arias , e.g. B. by Paesiello and appeared in GA Benda's stage works Romeo and Julie and Walder . Her husband was also widely acclaimed as her sensitive accompanist on the violin and when he performed his own compositions. From October 1780 to April 1782 they were at the theater in Hamburg with a similar repertoire , but despite their success, after irreconcilable differences with both their colleagues and the audience, Mad.Benda's engagement was prematurely terminated.

Allocation of Ludwigslust Palace and Church , jobs for court musicians
Ludwigslust: to the left of the little bridge, Haus Am Bassin No. 7 , opposite the Prinzenpalais

During the subsequent joint engagement at the court of Ludwigslust from May 1782, the couple went on concert tours for months, including performances in Hamburg, Lübeck, Gotha, Vienna, Prague, Dresden, Leipzig and Berlin. The court accepted and appreciated the long absences because the couple's increasing fame served Ludwigslust's reputation. When Friedrich Ludwig Benda was offered a director post in Königsberg after a particularly successful tour to the east, Felicitas Agnesia Benda returned to Ludwigslust alone in a dispute in October 1788, accused her husband of illicit, malicious absence from the court and filed for divorce, which April 15, 1789 was pronounced.

On May 11, she married the flautist and court musician Samuel Friedrich Heine, also: Heyne, (1764-1821). Because of contentious behavior, the couple fell out of favor and fled to Holland in January 1790, but were later allowed to return to the court of Ludwigslust in view of Felicitas Agnesia Heine's elevated position. A tour to England and Scotland undertaken in 1791 was particularly successful for Mad. Heine in London. In 1797 she married a Mr. Zeibisch in Reval, allegedly her fifth husband, and gave one last guest performance there, although she is said to have given court concerts in Schwerin until 1804, where she died of old age in 1835.

Stage roles (selection)

also appearances in:

  • The pilgrim to Mecca by Gluck
  • The conceited philosophers of Paesiello
  • The Barber of Seville by Friedrich Ludwig Benda
  • The winter festival of the shepherds of Rosetti (= Franz Anton Rösler)
  • Amore and Psyche from Schuster
  • Bravo arias by Paesiello and Majo

resonance

The vocal performance of Felicitas Agnesia Ritz is judged largely positively in the historical sources. Gluck especially admired her powerful voice, and Naumann calls her a "well-known coloratura singer ". Felicitas Agnesia Ritz has also been compared several times with "der Mara" and "der Gabrieli" , and Wolf describes the range of her voice on the occasion of his stay in Ludwigslust in 1782 as follows:

"In order to pay homage to the abilities of his good wife, he (Friedrich Ludwig Benda) had just set an aria in which all difficulties
 were at home for some singing voice, and had them rehearsed in my presence: runner and sustaining notes were in for good effect
braided together, but in particular a passage impressed itself so deeply in my ear that it seemed as if I could still hear it.
It began, where I'm not mistaken, in the unstroke a, and in the extreme Allegro it ran the whole chromatic scale twice, and another third,
through to three strokes c sharp; she articulated this passage as beautifully and clearly as to play that of the most skilled pianist
 can hardly be able to. "

Carl Friedrich Cramer meets "Mad. Benda" in Ludwigslust in 1783 and equates her verbally and full of admiration to Mara, not without expressing himself critically.

Due to her talent and her well-founded vocal training, Felicitas Agnesia Ritz had reason for self-confident appearance both on the stage and in private and public life. In Ludwigslust, her income was considerably higher than that of her husband Benda, and husband Heine is said to have been so wealthy by nature that he was even able to give the Duke of Ludwigslust a loan of 3,000 Reichstaler gold.

However, Felicitas Agnesia Ritz's personality traits have not only been commented on in contemporary entertainment literature as being overly ambitious, ruthlessly career-addicted and unsteady. But there was no evidence that she should have married a total of five times.

See also

literature

  • Franz Lorenz: The Benda family of musicians. (Volume 2: Georg Anton Benda ), pp. 118–127, de Gruyter, Berlin 1971, ISBN 3-11-003568-5 . 118-127.
  • Clemens Meyer: History of the Mecklenburg-Schwerin court orchestra , Ludwig Davids publishing house, 1913.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ see her portrait opposite page 4 in Lorenz 'biography
  2. ^ Dominicus Stephani in Musikalisches Conversations-Lexikon
  3. ↑ Lorenz's biography, p. 121f
  4. ↑ FL Benda had applied in 1783 to be allowed to live in the former apartment of the court musician Celentino, right next to the main guard on the palace square (and not in the small houses behind the church); his wife must always be around people in order not to fall into the “melancholy”, which could have an unfavorable effect on the “throat” of such a soulful artist ( Schwerin State Main Archive : Personal files 2.26-1 Grand Ducal Cabinet, Court Chapel, no. 6956 ).
  5. ^ A b Samuel Friedrich Heine in the Bavarian Musicians' Lexicon Online (BMLO) Template: BMLO / maintenance / use of parameter 2with links to detailed biographies in MGG and Grove Music Online as well as Clemens Meyer: History of the Mecklenburg-Schweriner Hofkapelle , p. 157f
  6. ↑ Lorenz's biography, p. 127
  7. ↑ summarized with references in Lorenz's biography from p. 121
  8. ↑ p. 302f, at Google Books
  9. ↑ Also a journey, but only a small musical one , Carl Ludolf Hoffmanns bl. Wittwe and Erben, Weimar 1884, p. 31
  10. ↑ Cramer on "Mad. Benda" in A Man of Fire and Talents , pp. 132, 144, 145, 152, 166, 171 at Google Books
  11. ↑ Clemens Meyer, p. 158
  12. ↑ Clemens Meyer, pp. 128, 157f. General Theater Lexicon, p. 279 . Encyclopedia of the Entire Musical Sciences, p. 549
  13. ^ Samuel Friedrich in the Bavarian Musicians' Lexicon Online (BMLO) Template: BMLO / maintenance / use of parameter 2Link zu Reden-Esbeck 1/1879, Vol. 1
personal data
SURNAME Ritz, Felicitas Agnesia
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ritz, Maria Felicitas Agnesia (full name); Rietz, Maria Felicitas Agnesia; Ritz, Felicitas Agnese; Heyne, Felicitas Agnesia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German opera singer (soprano)
DATE OF BIRTH March 11, 1757
PLACE OF BIRTH Wurzburg
DATE OF DEATH August 24, 1835
Place of death Schwerin