1874–1929, Austrian Hofmannsthal was a precocious talent. His first published poem appeared when he was just 16 and he rapidly made the acquaintance of some of the leading literary figures of the day. Most important was a paternalistic relationship with the German poet Stefan George (1868–1933). Hofmannsthal’s youthful ability led to a creative crisis in his mid-twenties from which he ...
(Hoo’-go Vulf) 1860–1903 German composer A fervent Wagnerian, Wolf worked in Vienna as a music critic. As a composer he was master of the miniature: his songs are mini-dramas which encapsulate Wagnerian expression within a lyrical, intimate form, the subtle vocal melodies matched by an equally important, symphonic piano part. The first collections, settings of poems by ...
1802–85, French Like the Scots novelist Sir Walter Scott, the French writer Victor Hugo had the happy facility for writing fiction that naturally lent itself to opera. Apart from his genius as a story-teller, Hugo’s secret lay in his vigorous attachment to Romantic principles, which exercised profound influence over librettists and composers of Romantic opera. Hugo himself ...
Following the social and political upheaval of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, Europe enjoyed a short period of relative stability with Napoleon’s exile, the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in France and the establishment of the Vienna Peace Settlement in 1815. However, in the early 1820s a number of minor revolts broke out in Naples and ...
The schools of naturalism and realism had an immediate effect in Italy. With scant literary tradition to draw on from this period, Italian writers in the second half of the nineteenth century seized upon Zola’s beliefs as a potent dramatic source. The style they developed came to be known as verismo and was exemplified by writers such as Giovanni Verga ...
‘Ariadne on Naxos’ Strauss may not have been the out-and-out modernist many have wanted him to be, but neither was he one to sit back and reproduce carbon copies of past successes. Strauss and Hofmannsthal decided to follow up Der Rosenkavalier with an altogether different proposition. Ariadne auf Naxos, in its original version, is a curious amalgam of ...
‘The Knight of the Rose’ For the follow-up to Elektra, Strauss declared he wanted to write a Mozart opera. Despite Hofmannsthal’s protests about a light, Renaissance subject set in the past, the librettist soon came up with a scenario that delighted Strauss. The correspondence between librettist and composer was good-natured and respectful. Each made suggestions to the other ...
‘The Woman Without a Shadow’ Like Ariadne auf Naxos, Die Frau ohne Schatten had a tempestuous genesis. The idea itself stemmed from the period immediately after the premiere of Der Rosenkavalier, but Hofmannsthal’s continual flood of ideas compounded by Strauss’s curmudgeonliness ensured the project stalled regularly. The start of the First World War did nothing to help, and ...
Following Salome was no easy task, and Strauss felt strongly that he needed to tackle an entirely different subject – by preference a light, comic work. He had been in correspondence with the playwright Hofmannsthal and approached him with an idea for such a work. Hofmannsthal had other ideas, and was insistent that Strauss should take up his ...
Verdi’s four-act opera Ernani, which has been called his ‘most romantic’ work, was first performed at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice on 9 March 1844. An immediate success, it was based on the tragedy Hernani by the French writer Victor Hugo. Politically, the treatment of the subject was far more overt than Nabucco, featuring a ...
‘The Joyful Girl’ Composed: 1876 Premiered: 1876, Milan Libretto by Tobia Gorrio, after Victor Hugo Act I Gioconda leaves her blind mother, La Cieca, surrounded by revellers outside the Doge’s Palace while she looks for her betrothed, Enzo Grimaldi. When Gioconda refuses Barnaba’s advances, he has La Cieca accused of witchcraft. Laura, the wife ...
Verdi’s three-act opera Rigoletto, based on Victor Hugo’s play Le roi s’amuse (‘The King Amuses Himself’, 1832), was originally entitled La maledizione (‘The Malediction’) – a reference to the curse placed on the superstitious court jester Rigoletto, which fulfills itself in the final scene. The first performance of Rigoletto took place at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice on ...
European culture lay in ruins after the end of World War II. There were many who, in company with the philosopher Theodor Adorno, felt that Nazi atrocities such as Auschwitz rendered art impossible, at least temporarily. Others, though, felt that humanity could only establish itself anew by rediscovering the potency of art, including opera. On ...
1813–69, Russian Alexander Dargomïzhsky belonged to an aristocratic family in St Petersburg. He entered government service, but resigned his post in 1843. The musical training he received in his youth enabled him to build a reputation as a pianist and his acquaintance with during the winter of 1833–34 with Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (1804–57) involved him in the movement to ...
1776–1822, German E.T.A. Hoffmann, the German novelist, critic, composer and conductor was among the most influential literary figures of the Romantic movement. He was the first to suggest that Mozart’s Don Giovanni was a Romantic rather than a Classical opera because of its strong associations between love and death. Hoffmann wrote several operas with dialogue ...
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