Chief Evening Breeze or The Dreadful Feast

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Data
Title: Chief Evening Wind
original title: Chief Evening Breeze or The Dreadful Feast
Genus: Operetta or Indian carnival burlesque in one act
Original language: German
Author: John Nestroy
Literary template: "Vent du Soir ou L'horrible festin" by Philippe Gille and Léon Battu
Music: Jacques Offenbach
Publishing year: 1862
Premiere: February 1, 1862
Place of the premiere: Treumann Theater, today Theater am Franz-Josefs-Kai
Place and time of action: Setting: One of the most remote islands in Australia
persons
  • Evenwind the Gentle , chief of the Great Lulu
  • Atala , his daughter
  • Coypu the Fierce , chief of the Papatutu
  • Arthur , a stranger
  • Ho-Gu , Evening Wind's cook
  • First, second Great Luluer
  • Grand Luluans and Papatutuans

Chief Evening Wind or The Ghastly Feast is a one-act Indian carnival burlesque by Johann Nestroy , also known as an operetta . It premiered on February 1, 1862 at the Theater am Franz-Josefs-Kai in Vienna .

contents

The widowed chief Abendwind announces to his subjects that he is still expecting Biberhahn the Fierce, chief of the neighboring island of Papatutu, for a working visit. Because the meeting is supposed to end with a feast, he orders his cook Ho-Gu to keep an eye out for a stranger who can provide a suitable roast:

"If one is tough, it has to be pickled; if you catch someone who is bloated, they can only be tolerated if they get into the right sauce; and spitting, proper spitting is good for all natures, because it makes everyone finer and milder." (1st Scene  )

The chief's daughter Atala suddenly discovers a stranger who has been shipwrecked and has saved himself on the island. It is Artur, who was a hairdresser in distant Europe. The two like each other right away, Artur tells Atala his life story and shows her a watch that is supposed to tell him the secret of his parentage here in the South Seas. Atala advises him to hide, otherwise bad things will happen to him. But Artur greets the chief anyway, and the evening wind immediately examines the stranger and thinks with Ho-Gu how the surprisingly washed up feast should taste best:

“And mainly beefsteak's! – Look at the young man, whether he doesn't promise a magnificent beefsteak!“ (  Scene 6 )

Artur goes off with Ho-Gu, believing the chef wants to prepare a feast for him. Meanwhile the chief of the Papatutu arrives with a large entourage. After the usual pleasantries have been exchanged, the feast is served. During the meal, Biberhahn talks about his son, whom he had brought to distant Paris many years ago so that he could learn something decent there. Now he was surely on his way home by ship, and then he should ask for the hand of Abendwind's daughter. Suddenly the chimes of the "family clock" sounded from Biberhahn's belly, and the evening wind confessed that Artur was the feast:

"One can probably never know what will become of the children -" (10th Scene  )

As Beavercock immediately calls his warriors to a campaign of revenge, Abendwind sees the last resort in asking the holy white bear for advice. But Artur, who had bribed the cook with a new hairstyle instead of slaughtering the animal, emerges from the bear's skin. After this tasted so delicious, Abendwind decides to only eat bear meat from now on. The two chiefs admit to each other that they once ate each other's wives. However, they solemnly reconcile and announce the engagement of their children. Before his final couplet , Artur speaks to everyone present:

“Then rejoice, you peoples of the islands! after my future residence wigwam I'll bring her home, the beautiful savage as a bride!" (13th scene  )

work history

Chief Evening Wind is the last play Nestroy wrote for the stage. He used the one-act play Vent du Soir ou L'horrible festin, operetta à spectacle en un acte (evening wind or the atrocious feast) by Jacques Offenbach as a template , libretto by Philippe Gille and Léon Battu . This operetta was premiered on May 16, 1857 at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens in Paris and was performed at the Theater am Franz-Josefs-Kai on June 22 and July 6, 1861 on the occasion of a lengthy guest performance by the Offenbach Ensemble in Vienna.

The playbill for Nestroy's work was marked "freely based on the French" . Nestroy followed the original scene by scene, and he also retained Offenbach's melodies for this operetta for his couplets and ensemble scenes. That's why the piece is sometimes referred to as an "operetta".

Little is known about the history of its origins, in a letter to Karl Treumann dated August 1861 Nestroy wrote: "Meanwhile I am already beginning to work on the 'Vent du soir'." .

He also adopted the characters of the figures almost unchanged, with the exception of the chief's daughter Atala, whose exaggerated comical attitude he softened in the style of the natural scientist Lady Gurli from Achim von Arnim's Die Eheschmiede . The contrast between the chiefs Abendwind and Beavercock (in the original Vent du Soir and Lapin Courageux ) was more strongly emphasized. As always in his adaptations of French fabrics, Nestroy has made the conventional elegance of the language of the original more expressive, typically Viennese, but above all more ironic. The satirical allusions to the contemporary are solely his idea, they do not appear in the libretto of the operetta.

Nestroy played the evening wind, Alois Grois the beaver cock, Karl Treumann Artur. According to a playbill that still exists, both Chief Evening Wind and Nestroy's Posse were played in vain on just one evening (February 4, 1862) . performed together in the Treumann Theater. The piece in between was the musical comedy by Karl Treumann, with melodies by Jacques Offenbach.

The play was played again on February 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 7th, 1862, then it was canceled and completely forgotten. Only the literary historian Karl Glossy mentioned it again after 50 years, on May 26, 1912, in the Neue Freie Presse . On February 22, 1914, he presented Chief Evening Wind at an afternoon performance at the Concordia Press Club , to great acclaim ; Gustav Maran played the evening wind, Richard Waldemar the beaver cock and the popular actress Mizzi Zwerenz Atala.

An original manuscript by Nestroy with preliminary censorship annotations has been preserved in the manuscript collection of the Vienna City Library ; some notes on the work are on a cover sheet of Zeitvertrieb .

Contemporary receptions

The actor Nestroy was celebrated by the audience, but the play was received rather unfriendly by the critics, the satirical content of the play was almost always unmentioned, it was obviously not recognized.

The Wanderer of February 2, 1862 (No. 27, Morgenblatt) sharply criticized:

“Even the carnival, where the most relaxed permissiveness prevails with the freedom to wear masks, does not justify such nonsense; and you don't have to prescribe it from abroad, you could have found it just as mindlessly at home. […] His [Nestroys] and the game of the participating Frln. Weinberger and the HH. Grois and Treumann could not save this farce in which a 'savage' thinks he has eaten his son.”

In the theater journal Zwischenakt of the same day (No. 33), the low impact was attributed to the inadequate voices of the actors praised in Wanderer :

"All respect to our Nestroy and Grois, but as opera singers they are out of place. About Frl. Weinberger as 'Atala' we agree with the view of her father, Chief Abendwind, who says to her: I notice a lot about you that I don't like!"

The Constitutionelle Oesterreichische Zeitung was also more benevolent that day :

“Neither the arranger nor the participants should be blamed, but the fact that the audience often put up with some things in a foreign language rather than in their own. Some of Nestroy's witty references received applause. – The performance was honored by His Majesty the Emperor , the Grand Duke of Tuscany , Archdukes Franz Carl and Carl Ludwig .”

The Vorstadt-Zeitung (February 2, vol. 8, no. 32) stated that even Nestroy had not succeeded in getting anything better out of Offenbach's weak draft. Moritz Gottlieb Saphir 's humorist wrote on February 8 (No. 6) that the plot was too tasteless and had therefore only become a succes d'estime (success of appreciation [for Nestroy]).

Later interpretations

Franz H. Mautner notes that Nestroy, under the cloak of an Indian carnival burlesque , satirically presents in this work the ever-growing nationalism he hated, the lengthy conferences of the last twelve years and the hypocritical pride in civilization. Chateaubriand 's (1768–1848) child of nature Atala in Nestroy's parodic reflection is a purely decorative addition. The "comfortable" bourgeois Gundlhuber from Eine Wohnung ist zumiethen in der Stadt is presented here again in the form of the cunning cannibal Abendwind, the palaver of the two chiefs caricatures the conventionally binding tone of the diplomatic table talks. The play was canceled after only five performances, because the audience either didn't understand the satire or found the black humor , which the poet had already hinted at in Fear of Hell , unappetizing.

Helmut Ahrens states that while Nestroy issued this piece as an arrangement, it became a mature work of its own. Although he stuck so closely to the text and melodies of the template, his originality is still visible in the dialogues. “Irony celebrates triumphs when savages make comments aimed at civilization.” (Quote) He also gave the striving for colonization – especially with regard to France – a harsh rebuff, although or precisely because voices were raised in Austria at the time to occupy overseas territories as well. The joke that the deeper meaning is unfortunately only understood by very few, because the fact that the parable of the cannibals is actually aimed at Europeans is lost in the hustle and bustle of the evening's all sorts of comedy. Although Nestroy is acclaimed as an actor, the deeper meaning is overlooked when he formulates the following ambiguously as the evening wind:

"My God, one wants nothing but to be able to eat one's few bananas and one piece of prisoner in peace." (Seventh Scene)

Rio Preisner praises Nestroy's successful camouflage of the political, because the play is in truth "a political farce against nationalism and Victorian civilization frenzy" .

Otto Basil makes this even more precise by stating that the work is "in the guise of buffoonery [sillyness, comical exaggerated play] a parodic polemic against the colonial imperialism of the European great powers, with the exclusion of Austria-Hungary ."

edits

In January 2015, Theater Dortmund brought out Chief Evening Wind and Die Kassierer: A punk operetta loosely based on Nestroy. The musical direction was in the hands of the punk band Die Kassierer .

At the Brandenburger Klostersommer , the event-theater in Brandenburg an der Havel performed the play in 6 performances in August 2017.

text

literature

  • Helmut Ahrens: I don't rise to the laurels. Johann Nestroy, his life. Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1982, ISBN 3-7973-0389-0 , p. 343.
  • Peter Branscombe (ed.): Johann Nestroy; Pieces 38. In: Jürgen Hein , Johann Hüttner , Walter Obermaier , W. Edgar Yates : Johann Nestroy, Complete Works, Historical-Critical Edition. Deuticke, Vienna 1996, ISBN 3-216-30239-3 , pp. 37-82, 147-194.
  • Fritz Brukner , Otto Rommel : Johann Nestroy, complete works. Historical-critical complete edition. Fourteenth volume, published by Anton Schroll & Co., Vienna 1930, pp. 564-618, 736-744.
  • Franz H. Mautner (ed.): Johann Nestroy's comedies. Edition in 6 volumes. 6th volume, Insel Verlag , Frankfurt am Main 1979, OCLC 7871586 .
  • Franz H. Mautner: Johann Nepomuk Nestroy Comedies. (= Insel Paperback. No. 1742). Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1979.

web links

itemizations

  1. ↑ Additional text: The stage presents an area with Australian vegetation. On the left around a tree stump, which serves as a table, lawn benches. On the right a hammock fastened between trees. In the background is a cage in which a white bear is locked.
  2. ↑ Branscombe suspects a connection with the chief's daughter Edrita from Franz Grillparzer 's work Weh dem, who lies! , for which Atalus (sic!) advertises in vain
  3. ↑ meaningful name: beaver rooster = turkey ; Viennese proverb: "He's the same in the Höh', wiar a beaver cock!" (Franz Seraph Hügel: The Viennese dialect. Lexicon of the Viennese vernacular. Publisher A. Hartleben, 1873)
  4. ↑ Ho-Gu = phonetic spelling of French. haut goût , taste of (game) meat that has been hung for too long; in the original, the chef's name is Paspeigné du Tout (= totally unkempt, unkempt)
  5. ↑ Nestroy writes grayish in his manuscript , this title is also given in the censorship files of 1861 and 1862; in the first print of the Neue Freie Presse of May 26, 1912, it is horrible for the first time
  6. ↑ get into the sauce = get Viennese for problems
  7. ↑ spicken = Viennese for bribe, smear
  8. ↑ Branscombe: John Nestroy; Pieces 38. p. 43.
  9. ↑ Branscombe: John Nestroy; Pieces 38. p. 59.
  10. ↑ Branscombe: John Nestroy; Pieces 38. p. 74.
  11. ↑ probably a polar bear ; however, there are no bears in Australia and the South Seas
  12. ↑ an oxymoron that alludes simultaneously to the capital city of Vienna and the tent of the North American Indians
  13. ↑ Branscombe: John Nestroy; Pieces 38. p. 79.
  14. ↑ Facsimile at Branscombe: Johann Nestroy; Pieces 38. pp. 207–212.
  15. ↑ Piano reduction of Offenbach's music in the music collection of the Austrian National Library , call number MS 82.922-4°
  16. ↑ Branscombe: John Nestroy; Pieces 38. pp. 150, 152–154.
  17. ↑ vent du soir = French evening wind
  18. ↑ lapin courageux = French The brave rabbit
  19. ↑ Facsimile of the playbill at Branscombe: Johann Nestroy; Pieces 38. p. 197.
  20. ↑ Manuscript in the manuscript collection of the Vienna Library in the town hall
  21. ↑ Cover sheet in the manuscript collection of the Vienna Library in the town hall
  22. ↑ Branscombe: John Nestroy; Pieces 38. pp. 156–159. (for the entire chapter Contemporary Receptions )
  23. ↑ Franz H. Mautner (ed.): Johann Nestroy's comedies. p. 306.
  24. ↑ Helmut Ahrens: I will not rise to the laurels. pp. 388-390.
  25. ↑ Rio Preisner: Johann Nepomuk Nestroy. The creator of the tragic farce. Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 1968, p. 175.
  26. ↑ Otto Basil: Johann Nestroy in self-testimonies and pictorial documents. (= rororo picture monographs. 132). Reinbek near Hamburg 1967, p. 154.
  27. ↑ https://www.theaterdo.de/detail/event/833/?not=1