King's children (opera)
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| Title: | royal children |
| Shape: | Fairy tale opera in three acts |
| Original language: | German |
| Music: | Engelbert Humperdinck |
| Libretto : | Ernst Rosmer (= Elsa Bernstein ) |
| Premiere: | January 23, 1897 |
| Place of the premiere: | Munich Court Theater |
| playing time: | approx. 3 ½ hours |
| Place and time of action: | Hellawald and Hellabrunn , Middle Ages |
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Königskinder is an opera in three acts by Engelbert Humperdinck . The libretto is by Elsa Bernstein ; she wrote it under her pseudonym Ernst Rosmer . The premiere of the first version as a melodrama took place on January 23, 1897 at the Munich Court Theater . However, since the work was hardly included in the repertoire of other opera houses after the first successful season, Humperdinck revised it extensively as an opera in the years 1907 to 1910; he also simplified the plot. On December 28, 1910, the revised version was premiered in New York at the Metropolitan Opera conducted by Alfred Hertz .
plot
first act
(Orchestra prelude: "The King's Son")
Deep in the forest, the young goose girl grows up with the witch, who thinks she is her grandmother. She dreams of the world and the people outside the forest, which she has never been able to leave because the trees and bushes around the hut keep her spellbound. The old woman tries in vain to teach the girl the dark arts of witchcraft. One day she tells the goose girl to bake a magic bread that will bring "whole death" to anyone who "eats it in half". However, the goose girl blesses the bread with the words: "Whoever eats of it may see the most beautiful thing, if he wishes to happen to himself."
When the witch has disappeared into the forest to gather mushrooms, the king's son comes down from the Hellaberge. He left his father's castle in order to get to know the world and people - unrecognized of his origins. The goose girl, who has never seen a human before, quickly takes a liking to the youth. As they both drink from the fountain, their lips touch. A wind blew the wreath of flowers from the goose girl's hair. In an attempt to keep it to himself, the king's son tears the wreath. In return he offers the goose girl his crown. They want to escape together. However, the girl cannot break the witch's spell. The king's son, who thinks she is a coward, falls into the forest in disappointment. Just in time, the goose girl hides the crown from the returning witch, but not her encounter with a human being. Angry, the witch locks her in the hut. Two citizens from the nearby town of Hellabrunn appear, led by the minstrel, a woodcutter and a broommaker. There, they say, the old king died without leaving a descendant. They now want to get the wise advice of the forest woman who should rule in Hellabrunn in the future. Full of scorn, the witch replies that whoever enters the city gate tomorrow at Hellafest at twelve o'clock, "whether it be a rogue or a changeling", is destined to be their king. With this news, the woodcutter and broommaker hurry back to town, but not the minstrel, who has spotted the goose girl through the window. The witch now reports that the goose girl is the child of a murderer and a whore. But the minstrel reassures the desperate goose girl: her parents had been kings in “love and suffering […]”. So she is a "king's child" herself. The goose girl calls her parents to help her break the witch's spell. A star falls from the sky and breaks the magic spell. The goose girl rushes into the forest, followed by the minstrel.
second act
(Orchestra prelude: "Hellafest and children's round dance")
In Hellabrunn, the citizens prepare for the Hellafest and the appearance of the new king. The king's son, who has meanwhile arrived in the city, can hire himself out to the innkeeper as a swineherd. However, he has to ward off the erotic intrusiveness of the innkeeper's daughter. The little daughter of the broom maker makes him longingly think of meeting the goose girl. The councilors move in with great applause. When the noon bell tolls, the city gate is opened. Outside stands the goose girl with the king's son's crown on her head. When he greets her as his queen, the people erupt in derisive laughter. The minstrel trying to calm the angry crowd is thrown into the tower; King's son and goose girl are chased out of town. Only the little daughter of the broom maker knows better: "That was the king and his wife!"
third act
(Orchestral prelude: "Spoiled! Died! - Spielmann's last song")
Winter has come over the land. The crippled minstrel now lives in the witch's destroyed forest hut, which was burned at the stake by the angry citizens of Hellabrunn. He is sought out by broom makers and wood choppers, along with some of the town's children. They ask the minstrel to look for the missing royal children with them. But the search would be in vain in the cold winter forest, the minstrel knows. While the woodcutter and broommaker are warming up in the hut, the minstrel goes off with the little ones to pick up the other children who are still waiting at the edge of the forest.
Then the two lost men appear, close to starvation and cold death. For the price of his crown, the king's son can beg a loaf of bread from the woodcutter and broommaker, which they found in the hut. It is the magic bread that the goose girl had once baked on behalf of the witch. Curse and blessing come true for both of them: they dream of their first meeting, then they fall asleep. The snow covers the two dead. This is how they are found by the returning minstrel and the children. The king's children are carried to the grave to the last song of the minstrel.
reception and research
The reception of Humperdinck's work was variable. The original version of the fairy tale Königskinder with the melodramatic incidental music ( melodrama ) had been negatively commented on by many critics when it was premiered at the Munich Court Theater in 1897. However, the criticism referred more to Humperdinck's experiment with the musically notated speaking voices and to the dramatic text, which was perceived as bombastic, than to the music. The melodrama Königskinder was also performed in other metropolises (e.g. Vienna, London) in the following years, but proved to be unviable in the long run.
On the other hand, the opera version from 1909, which was premiered in 1910 at the instigation of the impresario Giulio Gatti-Casazza with Geraldine Farrar , Hermann Jadlowker , Otto Goritz and Luise Homer at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, was highly acclaimed. The New York premiere reviews certified the work to be the "most valuable opera of the post-Wagner era".
Königskinder was also successful on German stages and was firmly anchored in the repertoire. Humperdinck praised the production at the Cologne Opera House as "exemplary" under the direction of Fritz Remond , the king's son of the melodrama premiere in Munich. In Cologne, Claire Dux and Elsa Förster created the role of the goose girl. The latter had already excelled at the Met at the age of 11 as a broommaker's daughter alongside Geraldine Farrar .
After the National Socialists seized power, the performance ban, which had already been imposed on the librettist Elsa Bernstein because of her Jewish descent , was briefly lifted through the intervention of Wolfram Humperdinck . However, Bernstein's name or your pseudonym Ernst Rosmer was no longer mentioned on any program flyer. From 1943 the work was no longer allowed to be played.
After the Second World War, in the course of the general criticism of German culture, reservations about the latent German nature of the subject and the form of the Wilhelmine fairy tale came to fruition. The socio-critical subtext (the thematization of high and low social backgrounds) that the poet wrote in the drama was largely ignored. The tragic end of the fairy tale may also have contributed to the relative unpopularity of the opera. The royal children hardly found a place in the repertoire for more than four decades.
It was not until the 1990s that there were sustained efforts to revive opera worldwide. So in 1992 by the English Nahional Opera , Sarasota Opera in 1997 and the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. Smaller German houses such as Gelsenkirchen, Hagen, Münster, Wiesbaden or the Zwingenberg Castle Festival also put the work back on the repertoire. Important performances come from Andreas Homoki and Fabio Luisi (Munich 2005, Gänsemagd: Annette Dasch , Königsson: Robert Gambill , Spielmann: Roman Trekel ) as well as Jens-Daniel Herzog and Ingo Metzmacher ( Zürich Opera House 2007, Gänsemagd: Isabel Rey , Königsson: Jonas Kaufmann , minstrel: Oliver Widmer ). The production of the Frankfurt Opera has been anchored in the repertoire since 2012. Graz and the Erl Festival brought out new productions in 2021.
A concert performance by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (DSO) under Ingo Metzmacher in 2008 with a model cast of singers (goose girl: Juliane Banse , king's son: Klaus Florian Vogt , minstrel: Christian Gerhaher ) provided further proof of the viability of Humperdinck's opera. A concert performance of the original melodrama version from 1897 took place in February 2019 at the Stadttheater Gießen under the musical direction of Michael Hofstetter , with Anja Silja in the role of the witch.
Musicology has so far only hesitantly devoted itself to the work, its genesis and its evaluation. We owe the extensive publication of most of the important source texts to the publications of the composer's granddaughter Eva Humperdinck. The most comprehensive study to date of the text and music of this opera, which is also suitable as a source of extensive information about Elsa Bernstein and Engelbert Humperdinck, not least because of the rich illustrations, was the result of a grant from the Richard Wagner Grant Foundation, Bayreuth. The publication by the musicologist and literary scholar Bernd Distelkamp is the result of an interdisciplinary research project at the Musicological Institute of the University of Cologne in the years 1999 to 2003 and was published as a commemorative publication on the occasion of Engelbert Humperdinck's 150th birthday. Numerous previously unpublished text and image documents were available to the author. In this publication, for the first time, all the text versions of the work are synchronised, and numerous photos of historical performances are included. A view of the royal children embedded in the composer's biography can be found in the relevant chapter in the biography of Humperdinck's son Wolfram, which, however, does not even claim to be scientific.
phonogram
- King's son: Daniel Behle, goose girl: Amanda Majeski, minstrel: Nikolay Borchev , witch: Julia Juon, woodcutter: Magnus Baldvinsson, broom maker: Martin Mitterrutzner, daughter of the broom maker: Chiara Bäuml, council elder: Franz Mayer, innkeeper: Dietrich Volle, innkeeper's daughter: Nina Tarandek, Schneider: Beau Gibson, stablemaid: Katharina Magiera, Frankfurt Opera Chorus, Frankfurt Opera and Museum Orchestra, Sebastian Weigle – conductor, 2013
- King's son: Klaus Florian Vogt , goose girl: Juliane Banse , minstrel: Christian Gerhaher , witch: Gabriele Schnaut, wood chipper: Andreas Hörl, broom maker: Stephan Rügamer, daughter of the broom maker: Sophia Schupelius, council elder: Wilfried Staufenbiel, innkeeper: Ante Jerkunica, innkeeper's daughter: Jacquelyn Wagner , tailor: René Vosskühler, stable maid: Manuela Bress, gatekeeper: Sören von Billerbeck, gatekeeper: Wolfram Tessmer, Frau Roksolana Chraniuk, Rundfunkchor Berlin , Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin , Ingo Metzmacher – conductor, 2009
- The king's son: Peter Anders - The goose girl: Käthe Möller-Siepermann - The minstrel: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau - The witches: Ilsa Ihme-Sabisch - The woodcutter: Fritz Ollendorff - The broom maker: Walter Jenckel - His little daughter: Karl-Heinz Welbers - The eldest of the council: Heinrich Nillius - The innkeeper: Heiner Horn - The innkeeper's daughters: Hanna Ludwig - The tailor: Walter Kassek and others - The Cologne Radio Choir - Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra - Richard Kraus 1952
literature
- Wolfram Humperdinck: Engelbert Humperdinck. My father's life. Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1965 ( Frankfurter Lebensbilder 17, ZDB -ID 222193-7 ).
- Eva Humperdinck: Royal children. Letters and documents on the history of the origin and impact of Engelbert Humperdinck's second and larger fairy tale opera. Görres, Koblenz 1993, ISBN 3-920388-25-9 .
- Eva Humperdinck: The genesis of the melodrama "Königskinder" by Engelbert Humperdinck as reflected in his correspondence. In: Andrea Korte-Böger, Jost Nickel (ed.): Engelbert Humperdinck on the 70th anniversary of his death. Schmidt, Siegburg 1992, ISBN 3-87710-153-4 , pp. 7-166 ( publication of the history and antiquity association for Siegburg and the Rhein-Sieg district 18), new edition as a monograph:
- Eva Humperdinck: Royal Children. A fairy tale in three acts by Ernst Rosmer. Music by Engelbert Humperdinck. Letters and documents on the history of the origin and impact of the melodrama "Königskinder". Gorres, Koblenz 2003, ISBN 3-935690-15-0 .
- Bernd Distelkamp: "An intimate fusion of word and music...". Investigations into the genesis of the fairy tale opera "Königskinder" by Elsa Bernstein and Engelbert Humperdinck. Rheinlandia, Siegburg 2003, ISBN 3-935005-81-4 ( publication of the history and antiquity association for Siegburg and the Rhein-Sieg district 24), (also: Cologne, Univ., Diss., 2003).
- Sheet music edition: Engelbert Humperdinck: "Königskinder". Piano reduction by Rudolf Siegel with German and French text. Contains a greeting by Eva Humperdinck and a scientific foreword by Bernd Distelkamp. Brockhaus, Rolandswerth 2006.
web links
- King's children : sheet music and audio files in the International Music Score Library Project
- Plot of Königskinder (opera) at Opera-Guide Target page currently unavailable due to URL conversion
- Discography for Königskinder at Operadis
itemizations
- ↑ Christoph G. Molitor: Hansel and Gretel in Cologne: How Popcornkino - Opera Gazet. December 13, 2021, accessed January 1, 2022 (German).
- ↑ a b Rita Bake and Birgit Kiupel (eds.): Elsa Bernstein: Life as a drama memories of Theresienstadt . 2nd Edition. Edition Ebersbach,, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-931782-54-9 , p. 11 .
- ↑ Production of Konigskinder | Theatricalia. Retrieved January 1, 2022 .
- ↑ Repertoire. Retrieved January 1, 2022 (English).
- ↑ Second revival of Königskinder in the opera house. Retrieved January 1, 2022 .
- ↑ Erl 2021: Royal Children / Online Music Magazine. Retrieved January 1, 2022 .
- ↑ Rediscovered at the Stadttheater. Review of the performance in Gießen 2019. In: Gießener Allgemeine , February 7, 2019, retrieved February 12, 2019.