Sebastian Mayer

This article deals with the singer and composer. Sebastian Mayer (rower) provides information about the rower .

Friedrich Sebastian Mayer (born April 5, 1773 in Benediktbeuern ; † May 9, 1835 in Vienna ) was a German-Austrian singer ( bass ), composer and director .

Life

Mayer graduated from the electoral high school in Munich in 1790 (today Wilhelmsgymnasium Munich ) and began to study theology in Salzburg , but then decided on a career in theater. In 1792 he went to the theater in Linz as bass player and was finally hired by Emanuel Schikaneder for the Freihausheater , where he made his debut on September 9, 1793 as Sarastro in the Magic Flute .

On December 23, 1797 he married the widowed Josepha Hofer geb. Weber, a sister of Constanze Mozart .

At the world premiere of Beethoven's opera Fidelio , which took place on November 20, 1805 in the Theater an der Wien , he took on the role of Pizarro. He also directed the premiere of the second version on March 29, 1806. Two letters from Beethoven to Mayer have survived, referring to the second performance on April 10th, in which Beethoven said goodbye to Mayer and asks him to “see to it that the choirs are rehearsed even better, because the last time there was no good We also have to have another rehearsal with the whole orchestra in the theater on Thursdays ”.

From January 20, 1815 to June 30, 1827 he was a member of the Vienna court theater. He also wrote chivalric novels and stage plays, including Friedrich the last Count of Toggenburg (1794), and the magic opera Rosalinde or Die Macht der Feen (1796).

Ignaz Franz Castelli writes about him:

"Sebastian Meyer. This man was not very important as a singer (bass), but a brave actor, and as an opera director an excellent protector and promoter of the truly good and beautiful. No one in Vienna has worked so significantly for the improvement of opera music, and therefore also for the improvement of taste in musical terms, than he. Equipped with deep musical knowledge, it was less his duty as a director and more a fine love for art that he managed to produce an opera in the Theater an der Wien that could not only compete with the court opera, but also with it far exceeded. It was he who wrote the better French operas, had them translated, and then set them on the scene with great care. Cherubini , Catél , Dallayrac , Mehul , Boieuldieu , Isouard were first known and loved by the Viennese through him. Whoever “ Lodoiska ”, “Semiramis”, the “Bernhardsberg”, the “Thurm von Gothenburg,” “ Johann von Paris ”, “Aschenbrödl”, the “two foxes”, “Johanna”, the “noble landlords” u. s. w. has seen on this stage, where they were sung as well as played under Meyer's direction, he will never forget the pleasure they afforded him; yes Meyer knew how to captivate the taste in such a way that even small operettas such as the “Schatzgräber”, “Tenant Robert” and others. s. w. filled this big theater ten or twenty times. The two Seyfried brothers gave him extraordinary support. Joseph v. Seyfried was a quick and happy translator, and Ignaz v. Seyfried one of the most capable capell masters, after Sechter probably the greatest contrapunctist, which his solid church compositions prove, and of which his many students, whom he trained in the composition, testify. He was not so happy with the composition of operas, but it often happened that by order of Meyer's earlier French operas, such as B. " Richard the Lionheart ", excellently re-instrumented and composed a new piece of music for others, which was recognized as the best of the opera. For several years I went to Meyer every evening after the theater and got to know this man completely. Then he usually looked through recent French opera scores and, since he did not understand French, I had to explain the content to him; Then he gave either Seyfried or me to translate the opera, and at the same time indicated to us the changes that we would have to make with it, indicated the places where new pieces of music were to be switched on, and left these, composed by us, by the Kapellmeister Seyfried or composing Fischer. He had older operas, such as “Richard the Lionheart” and “Raoul the Bluebeard”, completely re-instrumented; so it happened that the Theater an der Wien always brought news, well presented, and was the most popular theater in Vienna at that time. Even at his age, when he could no longer work as an opera singer, his passion for good music did not leave him, he sang in oratorios and in churches in the choir, and I have often seen tears of joy run down his already furrowed cheeks at expressive passages. Sebastian Meyer would have deserved an award for his contribution to building the audience's taste for good opera music; Such awards were later given to those who worsened the taste through common Italian trifling. "

Sebastian Mayer's last apartment was at Laimgrube No. 27, where he died on May 9, 1835, "of ascites".

literature

• Catalog of the portrait collection of the kuk General-Intendanz of the kk Hoftheater. At the same time a biographical guide in the field of theater and music. Second division. Group IV. Wiener Hoftheater , Vienna 1892, p. 354.
• Alexander Wheelock Thayer : Ludwig van Beethoven's life , edited in German by Hermann Deiters , Volume 2, Leipzig 1917.
• Willy Hess : Das Fidelio-Buch , Winterthur 1986.
• Tadeusz Krzeszowiak: Freihaustheater in Vienna 1787–1801. Workplace of WA Mozart and E. Schikaneder , Vienna 2009.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Max Leitschuh: The matriculations of the upper classes of the Wilhelmsgymnasium in Munich , 4 vol., Munich 1970–1976; Vol. 3, p. 190; there " Sebastian Mayr ".
2. ^ Ludwig van Beethoven: Correspondence. Complete edition. Volume 1, ed. by Sieghard Brandenburg , Munich 1996, p. 281.
3. ↑ Ignaz Franz Castelli, Memoirs of my Life. Found and felt, experienced and strived for , Vienna 1861, Volume 1, pp. 239–241 (digitized version ) .
4. ^ Wiener Zeitung , No. 110 of May 14, 1835, p. 568 (digitized version) .

Web links

• Biography on the website Kirchenmusik in Benediktbeuern