Opera am Brühl (Leipzig)

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The Oper am Brühl (also Baroque Opera Leipzig ) was the first opera house in Leipzig . It existed from 1693 to 1720 and was the second bourgeois music theater in Germany after the Hamburg Opera on Gänsemarkt .

Location and shape

Extract from a city map of Leipzig from 1749, the opera house stood on the property at the top right (work house for free)

The Opernhaus am Brühl was almost at the eastern end of the street and bordered to the north by the city wall. After the construction of the Georgenhaus in 1701, it was its neighboring building.

According to the Leipzig council files, the building was a three-story wooden house with a gable roof, 47 meters long, 15 meters wide and 10 meters high. The stage had 15 pairs of sets. The facade was divided by eight pilasters and ornaments adorned the entrance portal. The semicircular auditorium had fifty boxes in five tiers .

Building history and first performances

The Dresden court conductor Nicolaus Adam Strungk (1640–1700) had recognized that at least during the three times of the trade fair ( New Year , Easter , Michaelmas Day in September) there was an affluent audience in Leipzig interested in opera performances. That is why he tried to obtain a license for opera performances, which the Saxon Elector Johann Georg IV. Granted him in 1692 for ten years for the times of the trade fair and at his own expense.

Together with the Italian architect Girolamo Sartorio († 1707), who built the Hamburg Opera in 1678, Strungk leased the above-mentioned property in January 1693 for 300 thalers a year . The theater was built within just four months, so that the first performance could take place in the presence of the Elector during the Leipzig Easter Fair in 1693 on May 8th. The program featured Alceste with the music of Nicolaus Adam Strungk. The German text after Aurelio Aureli (around 1630–1708) came from the teacher at the Thomas School Paul Thymich (1656–1694). Thymich's wife sang the title role. Sartorio had built elaborate backdrops: among other things, there was a forest, a king's hall and a hell's throat with flames. Several more operas were created with this team.

From 1696 Christian Ludwig Boxberg (1670–1729) joined as a librettist and composer. In 1698 he had also composed and written the operas Die Schweidene Treue and Sardanapalus for a guest performance by the Leipzig opera company at the court of Margrave Georg Friedrich von Brandenburg-Ansbach . The autograph of the latter has been preserved in the Ansbach library . The play is the oldest surviving German-language opera from Central Germany (performed again in 2012 at Gotha Ekhof Theater ).

Bloom time under Telemann

Title page Telemann's opera “Germanicus” (premiered in Brühl at the Michaelismesse 1704), libretto by Christine Dorothea Lachs

The opera house reached its musical heyday after Georg Philipp Telemann , who had enrolled at the University of Leipzig two years earlier , headed the house as music director from 1703 . The 40-piece amateur orchestra (" Collegium musicum ") that he founded and consisted of musical students acted as the opera orchestra. In this Telemann's "Stubenpursch" (roommate), the later composer Christoph Graupner with. In 1705 Telemann gave up the management, as he got a job at the court of Sorau , but wrote other operas for the Leipzig house. In one of the biographies he wrote himself, Telemann reports:

... Soon afterwards I won the direction of the operas, of which I made a total of twenty and twenty from Sorau and Franckfurt, and also the verses for many of them. I made about four operas for the Weißenfelsischer Hof, and finally set up the still standing music college in Leipzig ...

Telemann wrote the texts for many of his more than 20 Leipzig operas himself, played the figured bass in the orchestra or sang operatic roles himself. Up to 1718, 17 of his operas for the Opernhaus am Brühl can be found, of which only Germanicus (composed in 1704, reconstructed in 2007) has survived.

After the occupation of Saxony by Swedish troops in 1706 as a result of the Peace of Altranstadt, there were no more performances for the time being, and gaming was resumed in 1708.

After Telemann's departure, operas by Melchior Hoffmann (period: 1706 / 1709–1715 as music director) and Johann David Heinichens (period: 1709–1710) were performed. Since Melchior Hoffmann was also director of the "Collegium Musicum" during his time as music director, whose members at that time were the later composers Johann Georg Pisendel and Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel , the latter may also have played in the opera orchestra. The composers Johann Christian Schieferdecker and Gottfried Grünewald , who later worked at the Hamburg Gänsemarktoper, were pupils of the Leipzig Baroque Opera. Among the singers at the Opernhaus am Brühl is Johanna Elisabeth Hesse born. Döbricht (1692–1786) should be mentioned, a sister of Samuel Ernst Döbricht (a son-in-law of Strungk), who from 1711 moved to Darmstadt as a court singer .

In total there have been 104 productions in the 27 years of existence of the opera, which sometimes - with three trade fair seasons per year - means more than one production per trade fair. Topics included ancient heroes' fables, historical events, motifs from contemporary novels and the popular shepherd games . Often students acted as actors and in the beginning also the two sisters Strungks and his five daughters.

Organization and decline

Text sheet of the "Musical Armory"

Even during Strungk's lifetime there were financial difficulties, so Sartorio had to serve a compulsory imprisonment for not paying the rent . After Strungk's death, his widow ran the company for several years from 1700. When after their death the children refused to take over the inheritance due to the high debts (from 1706), a son of Sartorio, Johann Friedrich Sartorio (* 1675/1679 – after 1717) and Samuel Ernst Döbricht (* around 1680–1751; he had married the daughter Strungks, Philippine (* 1677), a soprano at the Brühl), from 1710 as a tenant and Döbricht also as conductor and bassist of the opera. From 1710, Döbricht also directed the opera house in front of the Salztor in nearby Naumburg , which then took over productions from the Leipzig theater.

With regard to the staging, the situation behind the scenes became increasingly chaotic. In addition to Döbricht, Sartorio's son also asked for a say. The Strungk daughters were also involved in the dispute. Since 1711, Dorothea Maria married. Brauns (* 1666) as artistic director and Elisabeth Catharine (* 1668) as contralto - the latter, for example, as Agrippina in the Germanicus von Telemann - so that the parties fought each other in changing constellations in the following years. Among other things, costumes of the other party were hidden from opera performances. In 1712 Döbricht destroyed the set of the other Strungk daughters with an ax shortly before the premiere of the opera Echo and Narcissus , but then put everything back together again. In 1716 Döbricht ceded his rights to two of his sisters-in-law.

The last musical director Johann Gottfried Vogler (active time: 1716–1719) fled Leipzig during the Michaelmas Mass in 1719 because of guilt . It is also said that he stole instruments from the New Church.

The building of the Opernhaus am Brühl had defects from the start, which was probably due to the fast construction time, so that it often had to be improved. In 1719 an expert report certified that the state of construction posed a risk to life and limb. Therefore, the opera house was closed in 1720. In 1729 the city council bought it and had it demolished. The square fell to the neighboring Georgenhaus.

The musical quality of the performances in this house was also reflected in the music literature decades later. In 1752 the composer and flute teacher of Frederick the Great Johann Joachim Quantz wrote :

... The operas that were in bloom for a long time in Hamburg and Leipzig, now perished, and the famous composers who [...] have worked for them, have the same degree of good taste as music in Germany is at present , good preparations made ...

reception

View of the Leipzig Baroque Opera Exhibition in March 2013 (a portrait of the singer Johanna Elisabeth Hesse née Döbricht on the wall)

Michael Maul published the results of his research on the Leipzig baroque opera in 2009 as the result of an extensive research project on the history of the opera house, which has so far hardly been investigated, and which had been initiated by the Leipzig Bach Archive .

Under the title “Love. Power. Passion. The Leipzig Baroque Opera ”, an exhibition in the Bach Museum Leipzig from March 15 to August 25, 2013 dealt with the Leipzig Opera at Brühl. Among other things, original textbooks and documents on the history of the house were shown.

Apart from the operas Germanicus and Die Lybische Talestris von Heinichen (premiered in 1709, rediscovered in 2009 and re-performed in Bad Lauchstädt ), only a few arias from the operas of the house have survived, most of them (100 pieces) in the so-called "Musical Armory", a handwritten one , anonymously written music book from 1719, which is kept in the Leipzig city library (music collection).

literature

  • Heinrich Blümner : History of the theater in Leipzig: From its first traces to the most recent times . FABrockhaus, Leipzig 1818, p. 35 .
  • Peter Schwarz: Millennial Leipzig . tape 1 . ProLeipzig, Leipzig 2014, ISBN 978-3-945027-04-2 , pp. 450-452 .
  • Horst Riedel: Stadtlexikon Leipzig from A to Z . 1st edition. PRO LEIPZIG, Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-936508-03-8 , pp. 446-447 .
  • Michael Maul : Baroque Opera in Leipzig (1693–1720) . Rombach, Freiburg im Breisgau 2009, ISBN 978-3-7930-9584-2 .
  • Linda Maria Koldau : Women - Music - Culture. A manual on the German-speaking area of ​​the early modern period . Böhlau, Cologne 2005, ISBN 978-3-412-24505-4 , p. 514 f .
  • Georg Witkowski : History of literary life in Leipzig . BG Teubner, Leipzig and Berlin 1909, p. 331-334 . (on-line)
  • Booklet for the exhibition “Love. Power. Passion. The Leipzig Baroque Opera ” . Kamprad / Bach Museum, Leipzig 2013.
  • Roland Dreßler: Allow me to present a German singe game during the measurement times in Leipzig . In: Leipziger Blätter . tape 72 , 2018, p. 18-20 .

Recordings (selection)

  • Germanicus. CPO, DDD, 2010, Olivia Stahn, Elisabeth Scholl, Matthias Rexroth, Henryk Böhm, Tobias Berndt, Saxon Baroque Orchestra, Gotthold Schwarz.
  • Telemann and the Leipzig Opera - Popular arias from the Musicalische Rüstkammer collection. Pan Classics, DDD, 2011, Jan Kobow (tenor), United Continuo Ensemble.
  • Nuria Rial-Telemann. DHM, DDD, 2010, Nuria Rial, Julia Schröder, Basel Chamber Orchestra.
  • Sardanapalus. PAN, DDD, 2014, Jan Kobow, Rinnat Moriah, Franz Vitzthum, Sören Richter, United Continuo Ensemble, Bernhard Epstein .

Web links

Commons : Oper am Brühl  - collection of pictures

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Opera history. In: Leipziginfo.de. Retrieved August 2, 2016 .
  2. ↑ a b P. Schwarz, p. 451.
  3. ^ Strungk, Nikolaus Adam. (No longer available online.) In: operone.de. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; accessed on July 28, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Premiere Sardanapalus. In: tlz.de. Retrieved August 26, 2016 .
  5. ^ Brit Reipsch, Carsten Lange: Composers in the field of tension between courtly and urban musical culture. Georg Olms, Hildesheim, 2014, p. 37.
  6. ^ Telemann: Autobiography. 1740. p. 359.
  7. ↑ a b Michael Maul: The Uffenbach brothers visit the Gänsemarktoper . In: Hans Joachim Marx (Ed.): Göttingen Handel contributions . tape 12 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-525-27823-9 , pp. 188 . (on-line)
  8. ↑ a b History of the Collegium Musicums. In: nbcm.de. Retrieved August 24, 2016 .
  9. ↑ Linda Maria Koldau: Women - Music - Culture: a handbook on the German language area of ​​the early modern period . Böhlau, Cologne 2005, ISBN 3-412-24505-4 .
  10. ↑ Special exhibition Bach Museum. In: nmz.de. Retrieved August 24, 2016 .
  11. ↑ G. Witkowski, p. 333.
  12. ↑ Johann Joachim Quantzens, Königl. Prussian Chamber Music: Attempting an instruction to play the flute traversed: accompanied by various notes useful for promoting good taste in practical music, and explained with examples. JF Voss, Berlin 1752, p. 330.
  13. ^ Revival of Talestris. In: nmz.de. Retrieved August 24, 2016 .
  14. ↑ Booklet on the Musical Armory. In: eclassical.de. Retrieved August 24, 2016 .

Coordinates: 51 ° 20 ′ 32.6 ″  N , 12 ° 22 ′ 48 ″  E