Lohengrin (Nestroy)
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| Title: | Lohengrin |
| Original title: | Opera of the future, Lohengrin |
| Genus: | musical-dramatic parody in four pictures |
| Original language: | German |
| Author: | Johann Nepomuk Nestroy |
| Literary source: | " Lohengrin " by Richard Wagner |
| Music: | Carl Binder |
| Publishing year: | 1859 |
| Premiere: | March 31, 1859 |
| Place of premiere: | Carltheater Vienna |
| Place and time of the action: | Despite all the future, the action takes place in prehistoric times on the banks of the Dutch mountains. |
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Lohengrin , also Opera of the Future, Lohengrin , is a musical-dramatic parody in four pictures by Johann Nestroy . The piece parodies the opera Lohengrin by Richard Wagner , Nestroy's second such piece after the Tannhauser travesty .
content
Mordigall, incited by his wife Gertrude, accuses Elsa of fratricide against Pafnuzi. She is said to have murdered him in the mountains and made the body disappear:
- "In one night, damp, foggy, cold and gloomy,
- Then the two siblings went into the mountains,
- Then Pafnuzi found death - the story is getting darker and darker -
- The own sister killed her brother and 'sibling'. " (First picture, first scene)
Elsa defends herself in vain and finally calls an unknown knight to help, who is supposed to fight for her in a divine judgment against Mordigall. Lohengrin comes to her aid on a cart that is being pulled by a lamb and is ready to fight. He defeats Mordigall with a single blow without killing him. Elsa promises him the marriage for it, but Lohengrin warns her:
- "Place of birth, age, status, handling, certificate of origin,
- Has passport from - and whatever it's called, the rubrics -
- How about what your mouth does to ask
- Then I have to go and someone else can make you happy. " (First picture, third scene)
Gertrude and Mordigall forge plans for revenge, but they also blame each other for their defeat:
- Mordigall: "You lied to me Elsa's deed, whether I am armored,
- And now the whole fratricide shows up as nothing.
- It's only you to blame! "
- Gertrude: - - - - "Leave me alone,
- Better learn to fence better!
- Yeah, just stare at me you cowardly darling
- Your knight reputation belongs to the cat! " (Second picture, first scene)
Gertrude decides to put the flea in Elsa, saying that she absolutely has to bring out the name of her savior. Lohengrin and the count come out into the courtyard from the nightly feast to bring Elsa into the bridal chamber:
- "I swear to you that I never saw a girl, saw a girl,
- That I like as much as you do, o Edlsa, Edlsa, Edlsa -! " (Second picture, second scene)
When Mordigall storms into the room to murder Lohengrin, Lohengrin finally kills him. Now Elsa can no longer stand it and begins to question him despite his repeated warnings. Therefore he is forced to give Elsa his name and tell the story of the Grail:
- "A magic castle stands high on a rock,
- In the middle of a fairy grove, without any gels. [...]
- Grail comes from Gralawat and it is possible
- That once whoever stole, you don't know anything. " (Fourth picture, third scene)
Lohengrin now has to leave Elsa, but informs her beforehand that his sheep is in fact her brother Pafnuzi, whom Gertrude had bewitched. Gertrude stabs herself, Elsa hugs her brother, who has been transformed back, and faints, Lohengrin gets into the car, which is now being pulled by a vulture, and leaves. The whole choir sings sadly:
- "Oh look! Oh see! There he is moving!
- The dear, the good, the brave Lohengrin! " (Fourth picture, fourth scene)
Factory history
Nestroys Lohengrin was originally performed anonymously under the title Opera of the Future as the second section of the performance Heerschau auf dem Parodie . The first section was the play Posse der Gegenwart , the third was called Pantomime der Past.
The Vienna premiere of Wagner's opera Lohengrin took place on August 19, 1858 in the kk Hofoper (at that time in the Theater am Kärntnertor ), Nestroy's parody in the Carltheater was played for the first time on March 31, 1859. The author himself played the title role, Karl Treumann Elsa; Alois Grois as Mark- and Gaugraf and Therese Braunecker-Schäfer as Gertrude were also in the ensemble.
An original Nestroy manuscript with the title Lohengrin: Musical-Dramatic Parody in Four Fields (sic!) Has been preserved. It is a meticulous fair copy in which subsequent deletions and changes were made, partly by Nestroys, partly by someone else's hand. The manuscript is kept in the manuscript collection of the Vienna Library in the City Hall .
Contemporary receptions
The by no means full-length piece disappointed the audience and the critics. The reception was therefore not very positive throughout.
The Wiener Theater Zeitung of Adolf Bäuerle wrote on April 1, 1859
- “The 'Lohengrin' had a dangerous past with the ingeniously composed 'Tannhauser' parody. [...] The 'Lohengrin' cannot be called a parody because he has not absorbed a single element of the parody. The course of the plot is consistently that of Wagner's opera. There are - which should actually be the case - neither the motifs nor the plot of the opera turned upside down. "
The audience reaction was clearly described in Wanderer on the same day, but the ensemble was highly praised:
- “You should never stretch your expectations too high. A house filled to the last seat awaited yesterday unprecedented miracles, from act to act it became more modest and at the end it confessed to itself that it was a little 'eaten up'. "
The foreign paper , also from April 1st, assessed the decoration, the costumes and the stage technology very positively, but also found few traces of parody in the text and music; The press (same date) thinks that Wagner's original music is just as un amusing as the opera of the future; the suburban newspaper reported in the same tone .
The piece was also not well received in the Ostdeutsche Post on April 2:
- “The 'Opera of the Future, Lohengrin' lacks, as we have already indicated, at least the parodic coloring, both in terms of music and text. [...] You [the actors] as well as the hero of the evening, Mr. Lehmann, received the applause that was loud, but by no means the play. "
Later interpretations
Helmut Ahrens judges that with the Lohengrin "like a dissecting knife" , Nestroy exposed the greatest danger of Wagnerian art, namely of sinking into "gusty and pure word bells" .
Otto Rommel stated in 1952 that of Nestroy's late one-act plays, the two parodies Tannhäuser and Lohengrin had caused the most sensation because of the current choice of themes, but Lohengrin was "extremely weak" . As early as 1908 he said the work was "one of his [Nestroys] weakest pieces" :
- "This 'opera of the future in four pictures' is nothing but a trivialization of the opera text following the course of the original from scene to scene" .
W. Edgar Yates believes that the two parodies, Tannhauser and Lohengrin , were created at a time when Nestroy, due to his work as a director at the Carltheater, hardly had any more time for his own works than the actor and singer's engagement with modern (“future”) music would be seen. However, neither of them is on a high level in language and style, nor in the idea of the work.
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 .
- Fritz Brukner / Otto Rommel: Johann Nestroy, Complete Works. Historical-critical complete edition, fourth volume, Verlag von Anton Schroll & Co., Vienna 1925, pp. 201–240, 399–408.
- Otto Rommel: Nestroys Works. Selection in two parts, Golden Classics Library, German publishing house Bong & Co., Berlin / Leipzig / Vienna / Stuttgart 1908.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Nestroy makes fun of Wagner's use of the term “future” - with opera of the future, future knights, future women, etc., as in his Tannhauser travesty
- ↑ abmurxen = Viennese for to kill
- ^ Brukner / Rommel: Johann Nestroy, Complete Works. P. 245.
- ^ Brukner / Rommel: Johann Nestroy, Complete Works. P. 250.
- ^ Brukner / Rommel: Johann Nestroy, Complete Works. P. 253.
- ^ Brukner / Rommel: Johann Nestroy, Complete Works. P. 265.
- ↑ Gralawat, gralawatschert, kralawatschert = Eastern Austrian for wrong, crooked, deformed; probably from the Czech word kralovač = thief ( Peter Wehle : Do you speak Viennese ?: From Adaxl to Zwutschkerl. Ueberreuther, Wien / Heidelberg 1980, ISBN 3-8000-3165-5 , p. 183.)
- ^ Brukner / Rommel: Johann Nestroy, Complete Works. P. 274.
- ^ Brukner / Rommel: Johann Nestroy, Complete Works. P. 277.
- ^ Brukner / Rommel: Johann Nestroy, Complete Works. Pp. 403-407. (for the entire chapter Contemporary Receptions )
- ↑ Moritz Lehmann (* 1819 in Dresden) was a theater decorator at the Carltheater from 1843, later from time to time at the Treumann Theater ; In 1850 he was appointed "kk court theater painter"
- ↑ Helmut Ahrens: I am not auctioning myself off to the laurel. P. 364.
- ↑ Otto Rommel: The Alt-Wiener Volkskomödie. Your story from the baroque world theater to Nestroy's death. A. Schroll, Vienna 1952; S, 972.
- ^ Otto Rommel: Nestroys Werke, S. LXXXIII.
- ^ W. Edgar Yates: From the creative to the edited Nestroy. facultas.wuv / maudrich, 1994, ISBN 3-224-12007-X , p. 39.