Moisasur's magic curse
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| Title: | Moisasur's magic curse |
| Genus: | Magic game in two acts |
| Original language: | German |
| Author: | Ferdinand Raimund |
| Music: | Wenzel Müller |
| Publishing year: | 1827 |
| Premiere: | September 25, 1827 |
| Place of premiere: | Theater an der Wien , Vienna |
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Moisasur's Zauberfluch is a magic game in two acts by Ferdinand Raimund . The premiere took place on September 25, 1827 as a benefit event for the poet in the Theater an der Wien .
content
When Alzinde, the queen of the diamond kingdom, receives news of her husband's battle victory, she has the temple of the demon Moisasur destroyed out of gratitude and a temple of virtue built in its place. Angry about this, Moisasur curses the kingdom and its queen:
- "Your people, the servants of your court, who have blood only in their veins, human or animal, stand frozen and turn into stone!" (Act 1, third scene)
Alzinde herself is transformed into an old woman and banished to a distant country. The curse can only be ended when she cries tears of joy in the arms of death.
Alzinde finds himself on an alp where Gluthahn's property is. He tortures his wife Trautel with rudeness ( "Thirty years ago she cheated me out of five guilders, I won't forget that yet." ), He refuses her the help of the barber despite serious illness. When Alzinde comes in the form of the old woman, he brutally chases her from his court:
- "What do you dare to do, you want to die at my door? Such an inconvenience that I can still leave you buried '; go down over the mountain and look around a place where you can get there. " (First elevator, ninth scene)
The unfortunate woman finds shelter with a poor family of stone breakers. However, when Gluthahn notices that she is crying diamonds, he kidnaps her:
- "I won't leave the woman out, my heart is too good, I'll take her in." (First act, eleventh scene)
Meanwhile, the genius of virtue Hoanghu lets see Alzinde's lot and that of his empire in a dream. Hoanghu vows to make every sacrifice to save his wife.
Gluthahn wants to sell Alzinde to the jeweler Rossi because of her diamond tears. But he sees through Gluthahn's malevolence and has both of them brought to justice. The farmer complains about this "injustice":
- "This is how you arrive with your 'good heart!" (Act two, scene five)
Mirzel and Hans testify against Gluthahn and report that Trautel has died. But even now Gluthahn only shows self-pity:
- “That is a recklessness beyond compare; the woman dies and there is no one in the house. Now they are carrying all the money away from me. " (Act two, scene thirteenth)
He is locked up, but Alzinde is also condemned as a witch and thrown into dungeon. The genius of transience appears to Alzinde, shows her the hereafter and Alzinde is ready to follow him. At the last moment, the genius of virtue and Hoanghu can hold them back. Hoanghu offers Alzinde the better half of his own life as a prize. When Alzinde hears this, she sheds tears of joy in the face of death. This breaks the curse, Alzinde and Hoanghu are returned to their redeemed realm and the genius of virtue banishes Moisasur forever:
- See, already departing from your lands - Moisasur's spirit thundering.
- You are free from his bonds - here praise your queen! (Act two, scene eighteenth)
Factory history
In the order in which it was composed, this work is Raimund's fifth, but in the order in which it was performed it is the fourth, since Die gefesselte Phantasie was finished on September 24, 1826, but remained lying for two years and Moisasur's Zauberfluch therefore came on stage earlier. It was therefore Raimund's first serious stage work that he did not want to entrust to the theater in Leopoldstadt, which specializes in comedies and parodies , but instead went to the director of Carl Carls Theater an der Wien.
The title of the play was rather misleading for the audience's expectations, because it signaled one of the many parodic magic games of the old Viennese Volkstheater . Raimund had invented the fable himself; no direct literary model is known. It is possible that he was aware of the Alcestis adaptation by Christoph Martin Wieland (1733–1813) and that he transferred the role of Alkeste to Alzinde. Another possibility would be Josef Alois Gleich's play The Spirit of Destruction and the Genius of Life , but there is no evidence for this either.
Raimund wrote the play in the spring of 1827 - he began the second act in the Weidlinger Friedhof near Klosterneuburg - and tried not to weaken the sublime through parody, as he had done before. There are no strangely alienated contemporaries, no cozy allusions to Viennese conditions. The work is divided into two strictly separated parts: on the one hand into the stylized realm of demons and heroes, on the other hand into a realistically drawn human land. His contemporaries recognized and complained that the poet expresses himself much more naturally in the popular than in the stylized, pathetic style of language. The poet introduced no fewer than four married couples of different kinds to illustrate the problem of loyalty to the husband: the brutal relationship between Gluthahn and Trautel, the sensual love between Hans and Mirzel, the rowdy couple Karambuco and Ossa, and finally the spiritual love between Hoanghu and Alzinde .
A ticket for the second performance has been preserved: Director Carl Carl himself played the ember. Three years after the premiere, Raimund took on the role of Gluthahn for the first time; because at the time of the premiere in Vienna he was primarily known as a local comedian, he feared - probably not wrongly - that his appearance as early as 1827 would have jeopardized the seriousness and meaning of the drama he had hoped for.
The piece has been parodied twice without success:
- Karl Meisl wrote Moisasura's witch's spell (music also by Wenzel Müller), a scene-by-scene copy of Raimund's original with a comical leading actress, who delivered a parody of Therese Krones' playing style ;
- Heinrich Joseph Adami and Heinrich Börnstein wrote Monsieur Asur's clean curse , which was hissed out because of its gross meanness.
Contemporary reception
In a letter Ernst von Feuchtersleben (1806–1849), the friend of Schubert , Schwind , Grillparzer , Founder , Schobers and Hebbels and who inspired the Austrian Biedermeier , wrote a judgment about the effect of this work on Raimund's contemporaries:
- “If the title is a bit burlesque, the work is all the more sublime. The allegory of the piece touches upon the most secret notes of existence, and there are sounds that have never been heard before. The tragic effect, even on the non-thinking audience, is wonderful. In Shakespeare's style, the piece also includes a comical person (but in a tragic sense). That is the less successful. "
So the premiere was a great success, even during Raimund's lifetime it was played, but it did not last until recently.
Later interpretations
According to Rudolf Fürst , the naturalistic part of the piece, Alzinde's experiences in the human world, is simply an epoch in peasant painting. In contrast to the traditionally typically stylized Parvenu Fortunatus Wurzel in Das Mädchen aus der Feenwelt , Gluthahn is said to be a typical farmer,
- "Hard-hearted, kinky, blindly obsessed with profit, cunning and yet stupid and clumsy in his means, hypocritical and forever pounding on his 'good heart',"
described, his wife Trautel consequently portrayed as a troubled, stepped peasant woman.
Even Kurt Kahl notes that this piece in the realistic scenes far beyond the girl from the fairy world go forth, the poet give here a description of the rural reality that until Ludwig Anzengruber vorkomme again so. The social problem is partly reminiscent of Gerhart Hauptmann , the fairytale-pathetic drawing of sublime images and characters that are almost appropriate to the Burgtheater .
Franz Hadamowsky confirms that Raimund consistently continued his path to high drama with this piece. Allegories and symbols take up a lot of space: virtue, personified by the genius and his helper Ariel (the name is reminiscent of Shakespeare's stage character in the drama The Tempest ), is opposed to evil, also personified as Moisasur, the demon of evil. In contrast to Beethoven's demand for freedom and human dignity in accordance with the ideals of the French Revolution , Fidelio's love for his husband, who is ready to make sacrifices, is covered over by baroque allegories.
In Hein / Mayer you can read that Moisasur embodies nature as a demonic power in his person, his earthly counterpart is Ember Hahn, who as a mirror figure is therefore not subjected to any improvement process, but instead consistently retains its role until the end. The piece demonstrates the victory of the good, of virtue in all areas of life, which is never in doubt, but has to be fought over and over again.
literature
- Rudolf Fürst (ed.): Raimund's works. First and second part. German publishing house Bong & Co., Berlin / Leipzig / Vienna / Stuttgart 1908.
- Franz Hadamowsky (ed.): Ferdinand Raimund, Works in Two Volumes, Volume I, Verlag Das Bergland Buch, Salzburg 1984, ISBN 3-7023-0159-3 .
- Jürgen Hein / Claudia Meyer: Ferdinand Raimund, the theater maker at Vienna. In: Jürgen Hein / Walter Obermaier , W. Edgar Yates , Volume 7, publication by the International Nestroy Society, Mag. Johann Lehner Ges.mbH, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-901749-38-1 .
- Kurt Kahl: Ferdinand Raimund . Friedrich-Verlag, Velber near Hanover 1967.
Web links
- Role directory, content and text on ferdinandraimund.at/stuecke/moisasur
- Scene from the Wiener Theaterzeitung [1]
Individual evidence
- ↑ Rudolf Fürst names Philipp Jakob Riotte as a composer
- ↑ after Otto Rommel the name comes from Indian and means something like "evil demon" or "devastating natural demon"
- ↑ Actuary = a legal expert to record the negotiated and to supervise the files
- ^ Prince: Raimund's works. Second part. P. 11.
- ^ Prince: Raimund's works. Second part. P. 17.
- ^ Prince: Raimund's works. Second part. P. 21.
- ^ Prince: Raimund's works. Second part. P. 38.
- ^ Prince: Raimund's works. Second part. Pp. 45-46.
- ^ Prince: Raimund's works. Second part. P. 54.
- ↑ a b Prince: Raimund's works. Second part. S. LIV-LVIII.
- ↑ Facsimile of the theater slip in Hadamowsky: Ferdinand Raimund, Volume I, p. 306.
- ↑ a b Hein / Meyer: Ferdinand Raimund, the theater maker at the Vienna. Pp. 52-54.
- ↑ a b. Hadamowsky: Ferdinand Raimund, Volume I , pp. 99-100.
- ^ Prince: Raimund's works. Second part. S. LVIII.
- ↑ a b Kahl: Ferdinand Raimund , pp. 64–65.
