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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2018
This article traces the development of national opera on political-historical themes in Germany between 1815 and 1848 and attempts to explain why this genre ultimately did not succeed. The focus will lie on the warrior hero Arminius/Hermann, one of the most potent national symbols of the nineteenth century, who was indeed brought to the German opera stage, but could never conquer it. The period between 1815 and 1848 not only forms a crucial phase in the coming of age of German opera against the background of a burgeoning national conscience, but also presents a lacuna in the current literature on Arminius as an opera character. Two early nineteenth-century Arminius opera projects will be discussed: musical realizations of August von Kotzebue’s 1813 libretto Hermann und Thusnelde and French composer Hippolyte Chélard’s 1835 opera Die Hermannschlacht, based on a libretto by Carl Weichselbaumer. Questions of authorship, patronage, musical style and reception will be addressed. This article presents a history of an operatic ‘misfit’ that fills a hiatus in the study of German nineteenth-century opera and will add to our understanding of the peculiar relation between opera and German national thought during the first half of the century.
1 The statue was designed by Bavarian sculptor Ernst von Bandel, and chiefly funded by German middle-class citizens.
2 In an attempt to redefine the notion of ‘rescue opera’, David Charlton uses ‘liberation opera’ as a sub-category within rescue opera as it manifested itself in the 1780s and 1790s in France: ‘It is nevertheless possible that, in the sense in which a fictionalized army represents mass heroism, some operas analogically portray the heroism of the French people. … That is, they ought morally to be called “Liberty” or “Liberation”, or even “Bastille” operas’: Charlton, David, ‘On redefinitions of “rescue opera”’, in Music and the French Revolution, ed. Malcom Boyd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 179 Google Scholar. At the same time, I believe that the antagonism in most of these works is less concerned between a suppressed nation and a foreign suppressor. Grétry’s Guillaume Tell (1791) may be a notable exception in this regard, but it appears to me that the Swiss struggle against Austrian occupation must have been viewed chiefly as an analogy of internal political affairs in France in those days.
3 The term grand opéra was already in use before 1828. In his introduction to The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera, David Charlton traces the term back to 1768, when Pierre Nougaret stated that grand opéras refer to ‘all-sung operas [and] to works characterized by “marvels, variety, theatrical splendor” including ballets’: Charlton, David, ‘Introduction’, in The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera, ed. David Charlton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 3 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 A discussion of Arminius operas until roughly 1800 is provided in Barbon, Paola and Plachta, Bodo, ‘“Chi la dura la vince” – “Wer ausharrt, siegt”: Arminius auf der Opernbühne des 18. Jahrhunderts’, in Arminius und die Varusschlacht: Geschichte – Mythos – Literatur, ed. Rainer Wiegels and Winfried Woesler (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2003), 265–290 Google Scholar, whereas Barbara Eichner’s study takes 1848 as a starting point and discusses operas on Arminius/Hermann that were written in the 1870s and 80s. See Eichner, Barbara, History in Mighty Sounds: Musical Constructions of German National Identity, 1848–1914 (Woodbridge, Boydell & Brewer, 2012)Google Scholar.
5 Annales II.88, see Furneaux, Henry, ed., Corneli Taciti Annalium ab Excessu Divi Augusti Libri (The Annals of Tacitus) (Oxford: Clarendon, 1884), 350 Google Scholar.
6 Münkler, Herfried, Die Deutschen und ihre Mythen (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rohwolt, 2009), 167 Google Scholar.
7 Münkler, Die Deutschen und ihre Mythen, 167.
8 She is commonly called Thusnelda or Thusnelde, but many French authors referred to her as Ismenie. See Kösters, Klaus, ‘Freiheit der Germanen: Eine französische Karriere’, in 2000 Jahre Varusschlacht Mythos (Stuttgart: Konrad Theiss, 2009), 178 Google Scholar.
9 Roland Krebs, for example, argues that ‘the opera simply looked for themes in which effective dramatic conflicts could be realized musically, and apparently the story of Arminius met this demand’: Ronald Krebs, ‘Von der Liebestragödie zum politisch-vaterländischen Drama’, in Arminius und die Varusschlacht, 292.
10 Kösters, Freiheit der Germanen, 180–81.
11 Barbon and Plachta, ‘Chi la dura la vince’, 266.
12 See Krebs, ‘Von der Liebestragödie’, 292.
13 See Heine, Heinrich, Die romantische Schule (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1836), 31 Google Scholar. The choice of ‘Arminius’ rather than ‘Hermann’ is deliberate, emphasizing the cosmopolitan Heine’s unease about the Germanophilia of his compatriots. That Arminius/Hermann indeed chiefly served as a symbolic figure in a fight for German liberation in the cultural realm is underscored by the fact that Klopstock had a guiding role in the movement to stimulate a national, German-language theatre in Vienna, led by Emperor Joseph II.
14 Zimmermann, Rolf Christian, ‘Die kritische Replik der deutschen Spätaufklärung und Klassik auf Arminius-Enthusiasmus und Germanen-Utopie der Epoche’, in Verantwortung und Utopie: Zur Literatur der Goethezeit. Ein Symposium, ed. Wolfgang Wittkowski (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1988), 130 Google Scholar.
15 von See, Klaus, Texte und Thesen: Streitfragen der deutschen und skandinavischen Geschichte (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2003), 26–27 Google Scholar.
16 Quoted after Reeves, William C., Kleist on Stage: 1804–1987 (Quebec City: McGill-Queens University Press, 1993), 191 Google Scholar.
17 Wolfgang Wittkowski states that ‘even Kleist created a notorious Einzelgänger, who is hardly suited to the function of cult hero due to his boyish/student-like nature. He neither commands respect nor radiates human warmth’. Wolfgang Wittkowski, ‘Arminius aktuell: Kleists Hermannsschlacht und Goethes Hermann’, in Arminius und die Varusschlacht, 380. The vicissitudes of the Cheruscian girl Hally also display Kleist’s reluctance to glorify Hermann and his people. Hally is initially raped by Roman soldiers, who do, however, receive capital punishment from one of their superiors. Their female victim is treated even more severely by her own people: first her father, Teuhold, stabs his deflowered daughter to death, after which Hermann cuts her to pieces and distributes these to other German tribes to show what might happen to their women if the Romans are not stopped. This clearly forms an account of the mutual horrors of war rather than a glorification of German forefathers.
18 See Williamson, George S., ‘What killed August von Kotzebue? The Temptations of Virtue and the Political Theology of German Nationalism, 1789–1819’, The Journal of Modern History 72/4 (2000): 919 Google Scholar.
19 Schröter argues that Kotzebue saw himself foremost as a literary reporter rather than a political spy, and was very upfront about it, announcing at the Weimar court that he would settle in that city to fulfil diplomatic activities. His opponents, however, were enraged about this overt ‘collaboration’ with Germany’s threat from the east. See Schröter, Axel, August von Kotzebue: Erfolgsautor zwischen Aufklärung, Klassik und Romantik (Weimar: Weimarer Verlagsgesellschaft, 2011), 102 Google Scholar.
20 Quoted after Röttger, Kati, ‘Todesstoß dem August von Kotzebue. Politisches Attentat – Fanal einer Krise: Zur Theatralität der Öffentlichkeit zwischen moralischer Bühne und politischer Gewalt’, in Agenten der Öffentlichkeit; Theater und Medien im frühen 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Meike Wagner (Bielefeld: Aesthesis, 2014), 137 Google Scholar.
21 See Röttger, ‘Todesstoß dem August von Kotzebue’, 166–7.
22 This is a common trope, as Kotzebue turned out to be an informant of the Russian Tsar.
23 Williamson, ‘What killed August von Kotzebue?’, 913–14 (quotation on 913). Williamson for example quotes the following statement in the Literarische Wochenblatt by Kotzebue in 1818: ‘We highly honour love of the fatherland, and we are conscious of having displayed such love at some risk to ourselves when it was still night among us! But we hate all exaggeration, and we have to say confidentially to the Germanomaniacs: you would do well and help your own cause if you did not scream so loudly in our ears. Because truly! You can take it to the point that this cry brings nausea to every rational person – even ardent patriots, while it makes our neighbours burst out laughing’. Literarisches Wochenblatt I/3 (January 1818), 17.
24 This legend goes as far back as the fourteenth century, but it had recently been brought back to attention in chauvinist Romantic literature such as Joseph Görres’s Die teutschen Volksbücher (1807) and Deutsche Sagen (1816) by the brothers Grimm. See Borst, Arno, ‘Barbarossas Erwachen: Zur Geschichte der deutschen Identität’ in Identität; Poetik und Hermeneutik, ed. Otto Marquard (Paderborn: Fink, 1979), 17–60 Google Scholar and Münkler, Die Deutschen und ihre Mythen, 37–68.
25 Der Kyffhäuser Berg is discussed in some detail in Dean Palmer, A., Heinrich August Marschner 1795–1861: His Life and Stage Works (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1980), 11–15 Google Scholar. For a more detailed account of Kotzebue’s opera texts and the special status of Hermann und Thusnelde within this oeuvre, see Pendle, Karin, ‘Kotzebue, Librettist’, The Journal of Musicology 3/2 (1984), 199–200 Google Scholar.
26 Markx argues that this partly explains the increasing popularity of Gluck’s operas, among others. See Markx, Francien, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Cosmopolitanism, and the Struggle for German Opera (Leiden: Brill Rodopi, 2016), 62 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
27 Markx, E.T.A. Hoffmann, 236.
28 Barbon and Plachta mention the second name Valentin, whereas the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie speaks of Vincent.
29 Other contemporary renditions of the Hermann story based on other librettos were given in Stuttgart in 1803 (Hermann, text by Schott, music by Brandl, discussed in Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung (henceforth AMZ) V/19 (2 February 1803), 327–9, in fact an adaptation of Germania (1800)) and in Vienna in 1813 (Hermann, Germania’s Retter, text by M. Stegmayer, music by Franz Volkert, discussed in AMZ XVI/4 (26 January 1814), 69).
30 Although Friedrich Wilhelm cautiously steered clear of notions such as Germany – as he distinguished his Prussian subjects from Germans in the opening sentence − or liberty – which he replaces with independence – many tropes of Arminius are there; the king calls the different ‘tribes’ inhabiting his realm – Brandenburgers, Prussians, Pommern, Lithuanians – to unite in order to regain once and for all their independence. See www.documentarchiv.de/nzjh/preussen/1813/an-mein-volk_friedrich-wilhelmIII-aufruf.html (accessed on 12 December 2014).
31 Maurach, Bernd, ed., Der Briefwechsel zwischen August von Kotzebue und Carl August Böttiger (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1987), 230 Google Scholar.
32 Hübscher, Marieluise, Die königlichen Schauspiele zu Berlin unter der Intendanz des Grafen Brühl, 1815 bis 1828 (Berlin: Philosophische Fakultät der Freien Universität Berlin, 1960), 163–164 Google Scholar.
33 All text fragments taken from August von Kotzebue, Theater, vol. 40 (Vienna: Anton von Haykul, 1831), 149–202.
34 Moreover, Jost Hermand recognizes an allegory of the actual political situation in Kotzebue’s text; Napoleon is Varus, Hermann is Friedrich Wilhelm III, Thusnelde is Queen Luise, whereas the German fellow leader Marbod, coming from the East, signifies the role of Tsar Alexander in the liberation of Germany. Hermand, Jost, Von Mainz nach Weimar (1793–1919): Studien zur deutschen Literatur (Stuttgart: Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1969), 104 Google Scholar.
35 Indeed, in Berlin in the 1810s, the genre definition ‘heroische Oper’ seems to have been used for all-sung works, generally French tragédies lyriques in German translation, such as Gluck’s Armide or Piccini’s Didon. An alternation of musical and spoken numbers would have been called a heroisch-komische Oper, which also implied a playful entwinement of the heroic and comic realm – Mozart’s Zauberflöte is a clear example of this particular genre – that would not fit the rendition of a truly tragic story. The fact that Carl Maria von Weber’s Silvana – a textbook example of a heroisch-komische Oper with considerable amounts of spoken dialogue – was called a heroische Oper at its 1812 Berlin performance must be seen as an incidental misnomer, and was corrected in later editions and performances of the work. For more information about the heroic-comic opera see, for example, Geyer-Kiefl, Helen, Die heroisch-komische Oper, ca. 1770–1820 (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1987)Google Scholar.
36 Kotzebue, Theater, vol. 40, 164.
37 Kotzebue Theater, vol. 40, 177.
38 Schröter, August von Kotzebue, 100.
39 See von Kotzebue, August, ‘Chöre und Gesänge aus Hermann und Thusnelde, Schauspiel vom Etatsrath von Kotzebue’, in Musik gesetzt von: Bernhard Anselm Weber (Berlin, 1819)Google Scholar.
40 See AMZ XVII/28 (12 July 1815), 471.
41 E.T.A. Hoffmann, for example, praised Weber’s musical mastery and his aptitude for writing grand, serious opera in an 1815 review of the latter’s melodrama Hero: ‘The music reveals a profound sense, is ordered with firm mastery and forms a coherent whole. True virtue lies in this veritably tragic style, without the usual vain and peculiar pomp, which is rare in our days …. Hopefully this dignified master will soon have the possibility to express his energetic genius in a grand, serious opera’. Published in Dramatisches Wochenblatt in nächster Beziehung auf die Königlichen Schauspiele zu Berlin I/15 (14 October 1815), 114.
42 Hassan reveals that the occasion to write a music-theatrical work on the Hermann story was a long-cherished wish of the patriotic Weber, who had toyed with this idea as early as 1791. See Hassan, Karim, Bernhard Anselm Weber (1764–1821): Ein Musiker für das Theater (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1997), 264. 264 Google Scholar.
43 AMZ XXI/15 (14 April 1819), 252.
44 The AMZ reviewer conceded that ‘B.A. Weber’s music is truthful and expressively realized, and displays great diligence and craft’, but appears to have been voicing a rejection in a respectful way rather than genuine appreciation. AMZ XXI/15 (14 April 1819), 252.
45 Hassan reaches a similar conclusion; see Hassan, Bernhard Anselm Weber (1764–1821), 265.
46 AMZ XXI/15 (14 April 1819), 252–3.
47 This indifference towards Kotzebue’s violent demise was more widespread in the German-speaking world. Although Sand did receive capital punishment for his deed, the playwright’s headstone lacks a reference to his assassination, it simply says ‘deceased [gestorben]’. In 1819, shortly after the assault, Sand’s memoirs were published in English. The anonymous publisher voiced his feelings of shock with regard to the widespread sympathy for Sand’s violent act: ‘The editor … has been forcibly struck by the great degree of involuntary sympathy every where so eagerly manifested in favour of the penetrator Sand …. It was natural for him to feel the utmost surprise at these circumstances, and that too, in a country whose inhabitants are above all others, least likely to advocate or approve the dreadful crime of assassination’. Quotation derived from Röttger, ‘Todesstoß dem August von Kotzebue’, 136.
48 Weber’s popularity in Berlin in 1821 was also partly related to his antagonism with Gasparo Spontini, previously Napoleon’s court composer and appointed in Berlin from 1819 onward. Both inside and outside Berlin, Der Freischütz was often considered as a powerful counterweight to foreign operatic invasion, embodied by Spontini. For a detailed account on the Weber–Spontini antagonism, see Miller, Norbert, ‘Gekreuzte Lebensläufe, vertauschte Rollen: Carl Maria von Weber und Gaspare Spontini’, in Europäische Romantik in der Musik: Von E.T.A. Hoffmann zu Richard Wagner, 1800–1850, ed. Carl Dahlhaus and Norbert Miller (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 2007), 489–643 Google Scholar.
49 Tusa, Michael C., Euryanthe and Carl Maria von Weber’s Dramaturgy of German Opera (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 55 Google Scholar.
50 One finds this attitude, for example, in the ironic opening section of Hoffmann’s Der Dichter und der Komponist (1813), when the composer Ludwig is amazed to discover that his friend Ferdinand, a gifted poet, has joined the armed forces. Ferdinand explains that the fatherland called upon him, and he reassures his friend that his military activities have not harmed his poetic talent, but have rather given it a clearer direction, as he now sings the praise of honour and freedom. Ferdinand was clearly modelled after Theodor von Hippel, a Prussian statesman who wrote Wilhelm Friedrich III’s famous 1813 proclamation An mein Volk. Rather than endorsing the anti-political stance of Ludwig, Hoffmann actually ridicules the composer’s unworldliness in the opening lines, where he describes how Ludwig cares only for the score of his newly finished symphony, whereas he is actually nearly killed by grenades and artillery. Even if caricatured, there was a great deal of Ludwig in E.T.A. Hoffmann himself, and in many of his colleagues as well. Despite writing occasional works related to current political events, most Romantic composers pursued their highest artistic ambitions with less mundane subjects.
51 Neue Zeitschrift für Musik VII:12, no. 36 (1 May 1840), 143 (hereafter NZfM). The article was signed with S., a pseudonym attributed to Schumann by Anette Vosteen, who conducted the digitalization of the NZfM for RIPM.
52 Most famous for writing both the words and the music of La Marseillaise.
53 In an 1828 review in the Münchener allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, the anonymous critic – perhaps chief editor Franz Stoepel – called Chelárd’s evocation of a ‘Hexenschlucht’ a nearly over-obvious reminiscence of the ‘Wolfsschlucht’: Münchener allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 40, 5 July 1828, 637. In her discussion of the Parisian performance of Macbeth, Sarah Hibberd quotes a critic of Le Globe who also put forward that the Witches scene ‘suggested something of the “mysterious and fantastic colour” evoked by Weber in his “admirable” Freyschütz’. Later on, Sarah Hibberd discerns more correspondences with Weber’s Freischütz, see Sarah Hibberd, ‘Magnetism, Muteness, Magic; Spectacle and the Parisian Lyric Stage c1830’ (PhD diss., University of Southampton, 1998), 56.
54 For a more detailed account of Macbeth’s aesthetic, see Hibberd, ‘Magnetism, Muteness, Magic’, 41–69.
55 Revue musicale I/21 (July 1827), 525.
56 Revue musicale I/21 (July 1827), 525.
57 Throughout Europe, both a learned musical style and complex, advanced harmony were commonly associated with German music, a discourse that can be traced back at least until the eighteenth century. See, for example, Sponheuer, Bernd, ‘Über das “deutsche” in der Musik: Versuch einer idealtypischen Rekonstruktion’, in Deutsche Meister – böse Geister; Nationale Selbstfindung in der Musik (Schliengen: Argus, 2001), 123–150 Google Scholar.
58 Here I speak of ‘melodrama’ in the German sense, as recited text accompanied by music, and not in its French and English meaning, where it chiefly refers to spectacle theatre.
59 See Hibberd, ‘Magnetism, Muteness, Magic’, 63.
60 Chélard seems to have realized that his music did not fully fit the contemporary French music scene, which shows from a letter of 1829 to an anonymous correspondent. See Macnutt, Richard, ‘Chelards’ “Palladium des artistes”: A Project for a Music Periodical’, in Music and Bibliography: Essays in Honour of Alec Hyatt King, ed. Oliver Neighbour (New York: K.G. Saur, 1980), 185–192 Google Scholar. In this regard, Chélard’s position was comparable to that of his friend and colleague Hector Berlioz, who in the late 1820s also looked towards Germany in the hope of having his operas performed there, as he believed that the Parisian opera world was full of intrigues and silly conventions.
61 Zenger writes that ‘Intendant Baron von Poißl deserves exclusive praise for bringing the opera to Munich with a splendid cast, despite its lack of success in Paris’: Max Zenger, Geschichte der Münchner Oper (Munich: Weizinger & Co, 1923), 210.
62 The chronicler Franz Grandaur recounted that ‘Chélards Macbeth met with enduring acclaim’: Grandaur, Franz, Chronik des königlichen Hof- und National-Theaters in München: Zur Feier seines Hundertjährigen Bestehens (Munich: Theodor Ackermann, 1878), 106 Google Scholar. Whereas Max Zenger called the work ‘a most fortunate novelty’ and added that ‘the work kept the stage for a long time’: Zenger, Geschichte der Münchner Oper, 207–8.
63 Article possibly written by Franz Stoepl, chief editor in the Münchener allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 44 (2 August 1828), 704.
64 See Zenger, Geschichte der Münchner Oper, 210.
65 Local critics considered Mitternacht to have ‘beautiful music’ but a ‘dull and incomprehensible text’, whereas the light-versed operetta Der Student enjoyed more praise. Quoted after Zenger, Geschichte der Münchner Oper, 224 and 227.
66 See Grandaur, Chronik des königlichen Hof- und National-Theaters, 143.
67 Wolfram Schwinger lists Darmstadt (1829), Weimar (1831), Stuttgart (1831/32), Karlsruhe (1832/1834), Augsburg (1834), Dresden (1840) and Hamburg (1841): Schwinger, Wolfram, ‘Schumann und Chelard: Ein biographischer Beitrag für die Jahre 1839 bis 1841’, in Robert Schumann; Aus Anlass seines 100. Todestages, ed. Hans Joachim Moser and Eberhard Rehling (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1956), 76 Google Scholar. The piece was also performed in London in 1833, when Chélard directed a German opera company.
68 A great deal of the current artistic infrastructure of the Bavarian capital was founded by Ludwig I, who combined a vivid interest in great art with a fascination for the German past. Thomas Butz calls him the ‘greatest art initiator of his century’. See Butz, Thomas, ‘Hermannmythos und Germania – Der Denkmalkult des II. Kaiserreichs’, in Mythos als Schiksal; Was konstituiert die Verfassung?, ed. Otto Depenheuer (Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2009), 92 Google Scholar.
69 Zenger speaks of ‘the speed, with which Munich performed all French operas’: Zenger, Geschichte der Münchner Oper, 203; whereas Ludwig F. Schiedermair notes that ‘the spring tide of the grand historical opera had already come from Paris’: Schiedermair, Ludwig F., Deutsche Oper in München: Eine 200jährige Geschichte (Munich: Langen Müller, 1992), 66 Google Scholar.
70 Leerssen, Joep, National Thought in Europe, second edition (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008), 128 Google Scholar.
71 See, for example, Butz, ‘Hermannmythos und Germania’, 90.
72 See von Küstner, Karl Theodor, Vierunddreißig Jahre meiner Theaterleitung in Leipzig, Darmstadt, München und Berlin: Zur Geschichte und Statistik des Theaters (Leipzig: F.U. Brockhaus, 1853), 142 Google Scholar.
Küstner, who took over the administration of the court theatre in 1833, added that ‘these German sympathies, expressed by a German monarch, are so interesting and beautiful that I could not refrain from mentioning them’.
73 Schnorr von Carolsfeld’s son Ludwig would create the part of Tristan in the 1865 Munich premiere of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, but he died at the age of 29, after only four performances.
74 Significantly, Munich performed his Nibelungen piece, whereas his series of Hohenstaufen dramas were generally deemed unacceptable by the censors, arguably because of their anti-Catholic stance. See Küstner, Vierunddreißig Jahre, 141.
75 Küstner writes about this production that ‘the design for Der Nibelungen Hort was derived from the “Nibelungenlied” frescos in the Königsbau in Munich, pictures through which King Ludwig, German in attitude, word and act, glorified the oldest German epic and brought it to the people at large’: Küstner, Vierunddreißig Jahre, 111.
76 Schiedermair writes that ‘unlike the situation in Paris or Brussels, this Muette did not incite critical or even revolutionary sentiments among the opera enthusiasts of a city which, at that time, was still politically moderate’: Schiedermair, Deutsche Oper in München, 67; whereas Zenger writes that ‘this glorious opera struck a nerve, despite the politically innocent nature of Munich’: Zenger, Geschichte der Münchner Oper, 217–18.
77 In 1832, Ludwig even put his still-juvenile second son Otto on the Greek throne and helped to recover Greece through financial support.
78 Butz, however, adds that this glorification of German culture was in fact a compensation for the relatively pro-French attitude that Bavaria had taken up in the past, See Butz, ‘Hermannmythos und Germania’, 90–92.
79 Butz writes that ‘the Metternichian system of espionage and screening governed the daily press and academic education, but the concept of an overarching German identity tied to the Hermann myth lived on, because Ludwig I of Bavaria was a monarchic protector of it’: Butz, ‘Hermannmythos und Germania’, 89–90.
80 The Walhalla was designed as a Teutonic counterpart to the French Panthéon, which from 1791 onward functioned as a mausoleum for great Frenchmen. While the French mausoleum was directly modelled after the Roman Pantheon, the Walhalla took its cue from ancient Greek architecture. With its temple architecture and its placement on a hill, it closely resembled the Acropolis, whereas the notion of a Walhalla as a residence of the Gods in the mountains equalled the Greek idea of the Mount Olympus. This Greek orientation strengthened the German–French antagonism by tracing it back to the opposition of ancient Greeks and Romans.
81 Schwinger mentions this letter (Wolfram Schwinger, ‘Das Opernschaffen von André Hippolyte Chelard: Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung seiner Hauptwerke Macbeth und Die Hermannsschlacht; Ein Beitrag zur Operngeschichte der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts’ (PhD Diss., Humbold Universität, Berlin, 1954). Goethe’s approval of this subject seems improbable, however, considering the discomfort he had previously expressed with the contemporary Hermann cult of his fellow countrymen.
82 In an enthusiastic article about Weber’s Freischütz in Die Muse in 1822, Weichselbaumer had already discussed opera’s potential to incite national feelings, calling the ‘German spirit’ at work in Der Freischütz the chief reason for its widespread appeal. Die Muse II/11 (1822), 29–38, quoted after Michael Wagner, Wolfgang, Carl Maria von Weber und die deutsche Nationaloper (Mainz: Schott, 1994), 170–171 Google Scholar.
83 Schwinger, ‘Das Opernschaffen von André Hippolyte Chelard’, 60. Something similar is put forward by Max Zenger, who writes that ‘in 1835 his new grand opera Die Hermannsschlacht was performed, in which he paid homage to the German musical tradition that he honoured and emulated. This is his best and most thorough work’: Zenger, Geschichte der Münchner Oper, 210. In his memoirs, Küstner discussed Chélard as a German opera composer, because Chélard ‘counted himself as one of the masters of the German school as well’: Küstner, Vierunddreißig Jahre, 114.
84 Riefstahl published under the pseudonym of ‘-st-’ according to Anette Vosteen.
85 NZfM II:3, no. 39 (13 November 1835), 155.
86 NZfM II:3, no. 39 (13 November 1835), 156.
87 AMZ XXXIX:10 (8 March 1837), 162–3.
88 Chélard had been appointed music director in Augsburg in 1835.
89 Under the pseudonym ‘Jq’, which Anette Vosteen attributes to Heller.
90 NZfM IV:7, no. 13 (15 August 1837), 50–51.
91 Huschke, Wolfram, Musik im klassischen und nachklassischen Weimar (Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1982), 94 Google Scholar.
92 It is clear that Chélard recognized a partisan in Meyerbeer. When the latter was appointed at the Berlin court opera in 1842, Chélard tried to strengthen his ties with this fellow ‘French’ composer in the region. Meyerbeer’s correspondence contains letters from Chélard, who in 1845 discussed the possibility of staging Macbeth in the Prussian capital. See Heinz, and Becker, Gudrun, ed., Giacomo Meyerbeer: Briefwechsel und Tagebücher, Volume 3: 1837–1845 (Berlin: Walter & De Gruyter, 1975), 576 Google Scholar.
93 Schumann’s attitude towards Chélard is not free of ambivalence, however. He recommended his colleague for the post in Weimar, and praised his ‘undeniable aspiration towards profoundly characteristic composition and his gift for instrumentation’: NZfM VII:12, no. 36 (1 May 1840), 143. But whether he truly admired Chélard’s music is doubtful. In a review of Hermannsschlacht fragments in an 1840 Leipzig concert, he reported that ‘the instruments and voices nearly suffocated in the small concert hall like an old piano under Liszt’s hands. But as I said, the opera will fit the theatre better and sort its effect there, which it has already done’: ibid. A more straightforward aesthetic judgment is provided in a letter of Schumann to Carl Montag, where he writes: ‘I have met Chélard and he is indeed as amiable as you told him to be. As an artist, he is unfortunately only a fragment, but nonetheless one with greatest ambition to give his best’. Quoted after Schwinger, ‘Schumann und Chelard’, 74–5.
94 Signed with ‘C’, a pseudonym that Annette Vosteen links to Montag. Carl Montag was at that time the most influential musician of Weimar outside the sphere of the court theatre. See Huschke, Wolfram, Zukunft Musik: Eine Geschichte der Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt in Weimar (Cologne: Böhlau, 2006), 28 Google Scholar.
95 NZfM VI:11, no. 29 (8 October 1839), 116.
96 AMZ XLIII/30 (28 July 1841), 592–3.
97 Intriguingly, Meyerbeer and his French librettist Eugène Scribe had done the opposite, by dramatizing a black page of French history – the St Bartholomew Day’s massacre − in the sensationally successful Les Huguenots.
98 NZfM VIII:15, no. 15 (20 August 1841), 58.
99 NZfM VIII:15, no. 15 (20 August 1841), 58–9.
100 As a mitigating circumstance, one must acknowledge that the relatively sympathetic treatment of the Romans had been already latently present in Weichselbaumer’s text, regardless of the way in which Chélard set these words.
101 NZfM VIII:15, no. 15 (20 August 1841), 59–60.
102 This originated during the Liberation Wars (1813–1815) and became even more virulent in the years between the German Unification (1871) and the Second World War. A telling example is Friedrich Wilhelm Jähns’s Carl Maria von Weber in seinen Werken (1871), in which the author writes about the Freischütz premiere that ‘just as Germany on this very day (18 June 1815) liberated itself from the yoke of foreign domination, exactly six years later did German music liberate itself from the domination of foreign artistic elements; with the simple German Weber opposing the armour-clad Spontini … . In this victorious battle Weber helped the German people to gain … consciousness about their own position in musico-dramatic art’: Wilhelm Jähns, Friedrich, Carl Maria von Weber in seinen Werken: Chronologisch-Thematisches Verzeichnis seiner sämmtlichen Composition (Berlin: Schlesinger, 1871), 311 Google Scholar.
103 It is one of the unique features of Liszt’s spectacular, cosmopolitan career that he was not only a Hungarian composer of Rhapsodies and a Parisian piano virtuoso, but also the founder of an aesthetic movement called the Neudeutsche Schule. In his biography of the composer, Alan Walker shows how the moment of Liszt’s first visit to Weimar in 1841 coincided with an increase of criticism concerning Chélard’s qualities as composer and conductor. See Walker, Alan, Franz Liszt, Volume 2: The Weimar Years 1848–1861 (London: Faber and Faber, 1989), 97–99 Google Scholar.
In his music history of Weimar, Wolfram Huschke points out that the dissatisfaction with Chélard’s achievements increased even further when Liszt, now appointed as außerordentlicher Kapellmeister, had some major successes in 1844. See Huschke, Musik im klassischen und nachklassischen Weimar, 98–9.
104 In the restoration context of the Prussian court, this proved to be irreconcilable. Anno Mungen therefore argues that Agnes’s inefficiency as a national opera lies mainly in its implicitly anti-unitarian stance: ‘A “national” opera that, at a deeper level, turns itself against the national unification can clearly be considered as inefficient and contradictory’: Mungen, Anno, Musiktheater als Historienbild: Gaspare Spontinis Agnes von Hohenstaufen als Beitrag zur deutschen Oper (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1997), 98 Google Scholar.
105 Miller speaks of ‘His [Spontini’s] perception that his exceptional position should be justified by writing a significant work on a Prussian subject’: Miller, Norbert, ‘Von der Märchenoper zum Geschichtsdrama – Gaspare Spontinis Herrschaft über die Berliner Oper’, in Europaïsche Romantik in der Musik, Volume 2: Oper und symphonischer Stil, 1800–1850 , ed. Carl Dahlhaus and Norbert Miller (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 2007), 605 Google Scholar.
106 The most obvious praise for Spontini’s work was voiced in an article by Johann Philipp Schmidt, published in the AMZ. See AMZ XL/2 (10 January 1838), 25–30.
107 At the premiere of the first, incomplete version in 1827, Ludwig Rellstab was the most influential critic. In the Berliner Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, he called the work ‘the greatest flaw ever’ Berliner Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung IV/23 (6 June 1827), 183. The third version, performed in 1837, met with indifference, which Miller explains as the result of a general dissatisfaction with Friedrich Wilhelm III’s restoration politics, of which his favourite composer Spontini was felt to be a symbol: ‘His opponent was no longer the intendant, but rather the public opinion. To the public, Spontini’s ever more stubborn attitude became a symbol of the ever more restrictive Restoration spirit of the once popular king’: Norbert Miller, ‘Zwischen Hofoper und Nationaltheater: Die Berliner Oper unter Friedrich Wilhelm III. und im Schatten seines “General-Musik-Directors” Gaspare Spontini’ in Apollini et Musis; 250 Jahre Opernhaus Unter den Linden, ed. Georg Quander (Frankfurt am Main: Propyläen, 1992), 86. In his Vorschlag zu einer Oper (1844), Friedrich Theodor Vischer points out the irreconcilability of such a German subject composed by a non-German composer: ‘Because of its fundamental German nature, such a subject requires in any case a German composer, despite the fact that it could attract someone like Spontini’. Theodor Vischer, Friedrich, Kritische Gänge, vol. 2 (Tübingen: Ludwig Friedrich Fues, 1844), 401 Google Scholar.
108 On the title page of the text book, Logau explains: ‘Free from the problem of opera’s modes of dramatic depiction on the one hand and the strict, undramatic church-music style that dominates the oratorio on the other, the Päan stands at a newly created middle ground between both, combining the dramatic vitality of the former with the dignity of the latter, while replacing the theatrical means of staging with the power of melodrama’: Logau, Gotthold, Die Hermannsschlacht: ein Päan in zwei Abtheilungen von G. Logau; Musik von C.A. Mangold (Darmstadt, 1848)Google Scholar, 1. Logau evidently uses the word ‘melodrama’ in the German sense. His choice for an archaic term calls Klopstock to mind, who called his Hermanns Schlacht a Bardiet für die Schaubühne, referring to an ancient German tradition of epics sung by bards.
109 Mangold and Logau’s work takes over the style and shape of the massive oratorios sung in festivals by amateur societies, which were obtaining an increasingly prominent role in the German national movement from the 1840s onwards. Whereas these oratorios on Christian subjects were initially seen as paragons of the greatness of the German spirit despite their non-national content, heroes of national history such as Arminius gradually started to occupy the oratorio scene too. See Smither, Howard E., A History of the Oratorio, Volume 4: The Oratorio in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 9–14 Google Scholar and Koldau, Linda Maria, ‘Nation, Religion, Mythos und Oratorium. Spuren der Edda in den deutschen Oratorien des 19. Jahrhunderts’, in ‘Sang an Aegir’: Nordische Mythen um 1900, ed. Katja Schulz and Florian Heesch (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2009), 147 Google Scholar.
110 Barbara Eichner offers a detailed discussion of these works, with special emphasis to their respective employment of gender stereotypes, in History in Mighty Sounds, 81–116.