Verdi renaissance

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The Verdi Renaissance describes the revival of the artistic and scientific examination of the work of Giuseppe Verdi in the 1920s and 1930s in Germany. The most important protagonists of the Verdi Renaissance were the writer Franz Werfel (1890–1945) and the conductor Fritz Busch (1891–1951), who worked at the Semper Opera in Dresden .

prehistory

Verdi was initially quite successful on German opera stages. Until the middle of the 19th century, many of his operas were played on German-speaking stages soon after their premiere. For example, the opera Nabucco , which premiered in 1842 and with which Verdi had achieved his breakthrough in Italy, was performed in Vienna in 1843 as the first Verdi opera on a German-speaking stage.

Giuseppe Verdi - Galleria nazionale d'arte moderna e contemporanea Roma.

From the middle of the 19th century, however, Verdi operas had an increasingly difficult time in Germany, less with audiences than with the professional world, with critics, music experts and fellow composers. The criticism was, on the one hand, of the libretti set to music by Verdi , which were rejected as "dreadful", sometimes also as "disgusting stories" or simply as "nonsense" (some of the comments on Rigoletto ): the aversion to dramas was particularly strong Schiller- based opera texts such as Giovanna d'Arco (1845), I masnadieri (1847) and Luisa Miller (1849), later also Don Carlos (1867), which were particularly decried as unworthy "corruptions" of the German poet's prince. A leading exponent of Verdi criticism in the second half of the 19th century was the influential Viennese music critic Eduard Hanslick .

On the other hand, compared to a “philosophically reflective” German music, Verdi's music was seen by experts as banal, spiritless and trivial, as superficial “Hm ta ta” or as “doodle” and “organ music”. The Hannoversche Zeitung, for example, judged the German premiere of Rigoletto : “The music doesn't give in to the text in terms of meanness. […] [There is a lack of spirit, of any inkling that the composer understood what an opera could and should therefore be. ”In this context, Richard Strauss also made a statement :“ Yesterday evening, Aida, awful . Indian music. ”At best, the late works Otello and Falstaff were accepted , but they were said to be epigones, that is, the imitation of Wagner, whereby“ only the influence of Wagner […] Verdi's 'banal' melodies 'artistically ennobled' ”.

The supposed contradiction between Verdi and Wagner played a major role in evaluating Verdi's work at the time. whereby Wagner, as the innovator of German opera, stood for everything that was missing in Verdi.

This contrast was stylized into a dichotomy of divergent national character - superficial, Italian melodies contrasted with German profundity and seriousness:

"The dichotomous model of thought that was constituted and maintained in the music criticism of the 19th century in connection with the counter-translation by Rossini and Beethoven and that forms a number of contradicting conceptual categories of the music-aesthetic judgment, which in thinking and writing about music also found application in the early 20th century: for example, equating Italian music with vocal music, melody, sensuality, beauty as an antithesis to German music, which is equated with instrumental music, harmony, truth, spirit. The confrontation between Wagner and Verdi expanded to a cultural antagonism around 1900 within the framework of the idea of ​​a hegemony of German music, which a number of learned German musicians and critics endorsed. "

- Simone De Angelis: popularization and literarization of a myth

At the end of the 19th century, seven operas by Verdi still belonged to the repertoire of German opera houses: Rigoletto , Il trovatore , La Traviata , Un ballo in maschera , Aida , Otello and Falstaff , without being performed frequently. Central works such as Macbeth , Simon Boccanegra or Don Carlos had either not yet been performed on large stages or only shortly after the premiere. There was also no systematic musicological examination of Verdi's work in Germany at this time.

The German Verdi Renaissance

A first change in this situation emerged in 1913 around Verdi's 100th birthday, when a series of specialist articles appeared about him. However, Verdi was often taken less seriously as a composer, but rather praised with a culture-critical tendency, for example as a nature-loving, down-to-earth character, whereby Verdi's self-styling as a “farmer” (Verdi was actually a large landowner) was gladly taken up. There was no comprehensive re-evaluation of Verdi's work before the First World War, and certainly not during the war in which Italy had been on the side of the opponents of Germany and Austria since 1915.

Franz Werfel, photographed by Carl van Vechten in 1940

The comprehensive reassessment did not begin until 1924 with the novel Werfels Verdi (conceived since 1911) . Novel of opera a. Werfel consciously took up the contrast to Wagner in the plot of his novel by depicting a fictional encounter between the two composers. The novel was a bestseller in the 1920s, with around 60,000 copies sold by 1929. Werfel also translated some libretti from Verdi operas into German, such as Die Macht des Schicksals ( La forza del destino ) in 1925 , Simone Boccanegra ( Simon Bonccanegra ) in 1929 and Don Carlos in 1932 ; no further translations ( I Lombardi was initially planned ) were made because Werfel had to emigrate from Germany.

These libretto translations corresponded to the taste of the time insofar as at that time (and until the 1960s) on the stages in Germany and Austria, Italian operas were almost always played in German translations, unlike today. Werfel's libretti were less translations than free adaptations, although Werfel did not shy away from making sense-changing corrections, for example in the final scene by Simon Boccanegra . Werfel also continued to deal with Verdi, for example in the essays Verdi and the Romanticism (1926) and Verdi's dark epoch (1926). Together with the music historian Paul Stefan, Werfel arranged for the first German publication of Verdi's letters in 1926. This also laid the foundation for further scientific study of the topic.

Fritz Busch around 1930

While Werfel was the literary protagonist, the conductor Fritz Busch became the driving force behind the Verdi renaissance at the opera houses. His staging of the power of fate based on the Werfel libretto in Dresden in 1926 is considered to be the real beginning of the Verdi renaissance in Germany. Busch brought out “numerous musically exemplary Verdi productions in his era as music director of the Dresden State Opera (1922–1933)”. Georg Göhler also played a key role in the Verdi renaissance . As general music director of the Altenburg State Theater, he brought out Macbeth in his own translation in 1928 .

The Verdi renaissance in the narrower sense ended abruptly on March 7, 1933, when at the Semper Opera an audience consisting mainly of SA and NSDAP members shouted Busch down at the beginning of a performance of Rigoletto and drove him from the podium, with orchestra and singers to continue the performance anyway (without their conductor). Busch had supported Jewish artists and refused to accept advances from regime leaders. He emigrated for a short time, first to Great Britain and later to Argentina.

From 1933 Werfel was one of the authors indexed in Germany; he emigrated to the USA in 1938 (after the “Anschluss” of Austria ). Even without the two main protagonists, the revival of Verdi operas continued. Verdi was "associated with physical and mental characteristics of the Germanic racial ideology during the National Socialist era and functionalized in the sense of popular education". In the 1930s, more and more German opera stages played Verdi, with smaller houses often relocating to rarely performed early Verdi operas, works that are often only now being premiered in Germany. In the 1937/38 season Verdi was the first opera composer in Germany with the most performances - even before Wagner, who was courted by the leaders of the regime. The Verdi renaissance even continued during the war: in the 1942/43 season, in the middle of World War II, the most popular composer at German opera houses was not Wagner (1,047 performances), but Verdi (1876 performances).

Causes of the reassessment

There could be several reasons for the fundamental re-evaluation of Verdi's works in the 1920s, which has influenced the German repertoire to this day: In addition to a changed cultural policy in the 1920s, a general "turning away from Wagnerism" and a vague longing for the south , Lightness and simplicity are also to be named sociological reasons: The end of the traditional court theaters after 1918/19 resulted in increased commercialization of the opera houses. In order to fill their houses and to assert themselves against the simultaneously emerging competition from film, revue and operetta, the directors now had to rely more on audience-effective pieces. Verdi offered good prerequisites for this, especially since bravura pieces from his operas became known to a wider audience thanks to the new medium of record.

aftermath

Since the late phase of the Verdi renaissance during the Nazi era - since the 1937/38 season - Verdi has been the most performed composer at German opera houses. In addition to the '' trilogia popular '' - Rigoletto , Il trovatore and La Traviata - Nabucco , Macbeth , Luisa Miller , Un ballo in maschera , Simon Boccanegra , Don Carlos , Aida , Otello and Falstaff are now part of the standard repertoire of German opera houses. Large opera houses such as Munich, Berlin, Hamburg and Vienna always have several Verdi operas on their program. In addition, Verdi is now by far the opera composer with the most recordings on sound carriers.

Performances of Verdi and Wagner operas on German theaters:

Playtime Verdi wagner
1906/07 713 1,668
1916/17 780 1,456
1926/27 1,439 1,772
1931/32 1,420 1,385
1932/33 1,265 1,837
1936/37 1,401 1,515
1937/38 1.405 1,402
1938/39 1,440 1,154
1942/43 1,876 1,047
1956/57 1,901 821

literature

  • Simone De Angelis: Popularization and Literarization of a Myth. In: Anselm Gerhard, Uwe Schweikert (Ed.): Verdi manual. Verlag Bärenreiter, Kassel 2001, ISBN 3-7618-2017-8 , pp. 571-589.
  • Gundula Kreuzer: national hero, farmer, genius, aspects of the German “Verdi Renaissance”. In: Markus Engelhard (Ed.): Giuseppe Verdi and his time. Laaber Verlag, 2001, ISBN 3-89007-182-1 , pp. 339-349.
  • Christian Springer: Simon Boccanegra, Documents - Materials - Texts. Praesens Verlag, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-7069-0432-2 .
  • Christian Springer: Verdi Studies: Verdi in Vienna; Hanslick versus Verdi; Verdi and Wagner; on the interpretation of Verdi's works; Re Lear - Shakespeare at Verdi. Edition Praesens, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-7069-0292-3 .
  • Franz Werfel: Verdi, novel of the opera. Berlin / Vienna / Leipzig 1924.
  • Hans-Joachim Wagner: Paradigms of the Verdi reception. In: Anselm Gerhard, Uwe Schweikert (Ed.): Verdi manual. Verlag Bärenreiter, Kassel 2001, ISBN 3-7618-2017-8 , pp. 530-541.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Leo Karl Gerhartz : Rigoletto. In: Piper's Encyclopedia of Musical Theater. Munich / Zurich 1986, Volume 6, p. 438.
  2. ↑ a b c d Gundula Kreuzer: National hero, farmer, genius, aspects of the German “Verdi Renaissance”. In: Markus Engelhard (Ed.): Giuseppe Verdi and his time , Laaber Verlag 2001; P. 340.
  3. ↑ Norbert Tschulik: Hanslick was also wrong with Verdi , Wiener Zeitung of October 14, 2009, accessed on January 29, 2013.
  4. ↑ Simone De Angelis: Popularization and Literarization of a Myth. In: Anselm Gerhard, Uwe Schweikert (Ed.): Verdi manual. Verlag Bärenreiter, Kassel 2001, p. 586.
  5. ↑ a b Gundula Kreuzer: National hero, farmer, genius, aspects of the German “Verdi Renaissance”. In: Markus Engelhard (Ed.): Giuseppe Verdi and his time. Laaber Verlag, 2001, p. 339.
  6. ↑ Hannoversche Zeitung, February 27, 1853, quoted from Günter Engler (Ed.): About Verdi. Reclam, Stuttgart 2000, p. 73 f.
  7. ↑ Günter Engler (Ed.): About Verdi. Reclam, Stuttgart 2000, p. 86.
  8. ↑ Hans-Joachim Wagner: Paradigms of the Verdi reception. In: Anselm Gerhard, Uwe Schweikert (Ed.): Verdi manual. Verlag Bärenreiter, Kassel 2001, p. 533. Thomas Mann also judged in this sense: "The penultimate opera [Otello] Italianized Wagner, rich in musical fantasy and invention, 'purely human', without mythical consecration ...", quoted. according to Günter Engler (ed.): About Verdi. Reclam, Stuttgart 2000, p. 160.
  9. ↑ Hans-Joachim Wagner: Paradigms of the Verdi reception. In: Anselm Gerhard, Uwe Schweikert (Ed.): Verdi manual. Verlag Bärenreiter, Kassel 2001, p. 537 f.
  10. ↑ Simone De Angelis: Popularization and Literarization of a Myth. In: Anselm Gerhard, Uwe Schweikert (Ed.): Verdi manual. Verlag Bärenreiter, Kassel 2001, p. 586.
  11. ^ A b c Christian Springer: Simon Boccanegra, Documents - Materials - Texts. Praesens Verlag, Vienna 2007, p. 498.
  12. ^ Julian Budden: Verdi - life and work. Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 1987, p. 5.
  13. ^ Christian Springer: Simon Boccanegra, Documents - Materials - Texts. Praesens Verlag, Vienna 2007, p. 499.
  14. ^ Kurt Malisch: Macbeth. In: Piper's Encyclopedia of Musical Theater. Munich / Zurich 1986, Volume 6, p. 416.
  15. ↑ Justice for the conductor Fritz Busch. In: The world. February 24, 2009, accessed March 7, 2013.
  16. ↑ a b c Gundula Kreuzer: National hero, farmer, genius, aspects of the German “Verdi Renaissance”. In: Markus Engelhard (Ed.): Giuseppe Verdi and his time. Laaber Verlag, 2001, p. 343 f.
  17. ↑ a b Gundula Kreuzer: National hero, farmer, genius, aspects of the German “Verdi Renaissance”. In: Markus Engelhard (Ed.): Giuseppe Verdi and his time. Laaber Verlag, 2001, p. 341.
  18. ↑ Verdi discography at operadis
  19. ↑ Gundula Kreuzer: National hero, farmer, genius, aspects of the German “Verdi Renaissance”. In: Markus Engelhard (Ed.): Giuseppe Verdi and his time. Laaber Verlag, 2001, p. 343 - more recent figures are not available