THE VIENNESE VOGUE FOR OPÉRA-COMIQUE 1790-1819 : VOL 2. Carolyn Kirk A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of St Andrews 1985 Full metadata for this item is available in Research@StAndrews:FullText at: http://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/ Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10023/7282 This item is protected by original copyright Volume II The Viennese vogue for opera—comique 1790— 1819 .- submitted by Carolyn Kirk In ful filment of the requirements for Ph.D. degree of the University of St. Andrews November, 1983 ' 4. CHAPTER V A study of contemporary performance material 427 I. Research Method A. Finding extant performance material Since the publication of Hadamowsky's catalogues, 1 researchers outside Austria have been made aware of the wealth of material: manuscript scores, printed texts and manuscript textbooks, which were used by performers, censors, prompters or other members of the theatre staff in connection with eighteenth and nine- teenth century opera productions at the Viennese court theatres. Once part of the court library, they are now mostly housed in the Musiksammlung of the National- bibliothek; a few textbooks have become part of the collection in the Theatersammlung. Although Hadamowsky's catalogue contains a:few slips (the class mark which he gives for a manuscript score of Isouard's AschenbrOdl (Cendrillon) is dis- covered, on examination, to be a German score for Rossini's opera of the same name), it is more accurate than the card catalogue in the Musiksammlung. This, for example, still lists a manuscript German score for Spontini's Fernand Cortez, which was first regis- tered as lost in an inventory taken in 1918 and which Hadamowsky duly omits. Attempts to study performance material for a particular production can, in spite . of good published catalogues, still be frustrating and time-consuming. 1. Franz Hadamowsky, Die Wiener Hoftheater (Staatstheater), part 1, 1776-1810 (Vienna, 1966), and part 2, Die Wiener Hofoper (Staatsoper) 1811-1974 (Vienna, 1975). 428 In 1978 (changes may have been made since), the Musiksammlung found it necessary to limit the number of volumes which could be ordered or held on reserve. Manuscript scores and texts had to be ordered a day in advance. A researcher intent on investigating how operas-comiques were performed in Vienna might be eyed with faint suspicion in the Musiksammlung as he sat surrounded by three or four large volumes of manuscript scores of one opera, a bundle of hand-written textbooks, a German printed text and French score and text. Com- paring two different Viennese productions of the same French opera required double the amount of material -- and special dispensation from the librarians. Sometimes, an all-important French opera score was not owned by the Musiksamlung or no published German texts remained from a production. Then, deciphering a sketchy German score from which pages of text might be missing, and which...was not clearly divided into acts or scenes, became bewildering. Manuscript opera scores used at the court theatres between 1790 and 1819 bear the class mark KT or Kth, followed by a number. Scores are numbered alphabeti- cally, so that operas whose titles begin with an early letter have smaller numbers than the latter half of the alphabet. After 1810, performance of opera at court theatres was restricted to the Karntnerthortheater; the Burgtheater became the stage for spoken drama. Hence the KT class mark for all operas, even though they may have been performed at the Burgtheater before 1810. 429 The manuscript scores of some later French operas which were produced in Vienna (in German translation), bear the class mark OA, which stands for Opern Archly. Scores with this designation usually date from productions in or after the middle of the nineteenth century; occasionally they refer to earlier productions which enjoyed an exceptionally long run. The more a score was used, the more difficult it is now to decipher the different layers of alteration and decide how a work was given at any particular date. Some of the operas about which one would most like to know details of Viennese productions, have scores which are now almost illegible because of their popu- larity and success. An aria might be struck out, for example, yet still have detailed comments, performance directions (such as a director may add in rehearsal)and well-worn corners, to suggest that the pages were well- used. Such a number might merely have been omitted during the guest appearance of one particular singer. Parts of a score habitually omitted in a_perfor- mance were usually sewn together at the corners of the pages with tough linen thread. 1 The usual method of indicating alterations in textbooks was by pasting a new passage over the old one, in which case it is not possible to read the earlier version. The German text of a French opera as used in performance would often contain substantial differences from the published translation -- being presumably altered in the course of rehearsal or production. 1. Permission may be granted by the librarians for this to be cut. 430 So far, mention has been made only of material remaining from productions at the court theatres. Performance scores and texts do remain from the other theatres, but their date and theatre are harder to identify with certainty. Some performance material remains from productions of French operas at the suburban theatres. Scores from these theatres have not been assembled together into orderly collections like those from the court theatres. They may be found in the Stadtbibliothek, Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde and the Musiksammlung. When one stumbles across a German version of an op6ra-comique, hand-copied and bearing signs of having been used for performance, it may be difficult to state with certainty to which theatre it belonged. One such score, of Cherubini's Lodoiska, discussed below, 1 is almost cer- tainly the score used at the Theater an der Wien in 18025 for its text tallies with the German translation known to have been used for the production and it bears the initials TW on the cover. It is likely that other hand-copied scores of French operas with German texts which bear this Musik- sammlung classmark are Theater an der Wien scores. However, at one stage, the "TW" on this score of Lodoiska has been struck out and some parts of the music appear unused, which is confusing. In such cases one can only speculate: perhaps the score was borrowed by another theatre ; perhaps it was used in conjunction with another score, in-which case the evidence it gives about the 1. See p. 509. 431 1802 Theater an der Wien production is incomplete. Questions of use and ownership exist about many such scores which belong to collections not arranged as the archive of a particular_theatre. In all the Viennese libraries, there remains the possibility that what seems to be an early nineteenth century opera-comique score used for productions at one of the main Viennese theatres, may have merely belonged to an individual, been used in performance by a group of amateurs or have belonged to a theatre outside Vienna. Many such scores are housed in the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. Clues, such as dates of performance pencilled in the score; names of well-known singers from a particular theatre, the signature of a censor or theatre director, may sometimes help to identify a score and the theatre at which it was used. Comparison with a particular printed translation may sometimes help to identify a score and its theatre. The writer ordered a manuscript German score of Dalayrac's Renaud d'Ast at the Gesell- schaft der Musikfreunde. The original owner of the score was not clear though it evidently originated from the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. Inside it, however, a manuscript text book not recorded in the library catalogue bore a censor's stamp and date, Because this matched the score, it was possible to say with reasonable certainty that the score had been used for productions of the opera known to have taken place at the Theater in der Leopoldstadt during the 1790s. lyz c2,22,„ _Cc7' rot. 7, #* 4•1 01414.1A. ate4. 4v • • •••••n• cysea.. n .'D 54:11 A ..4411.4.4.1 / # y_74.4 • .1•••n••••• • Two pages from a Viennese translation of an opera-comique: Der Deserteur(by Mbnsigny), translated by Wilhelm Ehlers (see p 453). VMsmig SM 32719. • 434 B. The manuscripts Manuscript scores of French operas containing the German translations to be used in Vienna and prepared by copyists are large and-bulky. Generally, each act takes up one volumes which may be as much as three or four inches thick. The scores are bound between pasteboard and have a rough appearance because of the untrimmed edges of each page. These scores are about 18 inches long and ten inches high. They tend to be sketchy and sometimes give only the vocal line, violin part and bass line. Woodwind and brass parts for the different numbers are sometimes sewn into the end of each volume -- perhaps by the theatre librarian at the end of a production. It is possible that orchestral parts remain, which might give a clearer idea about instrumentation but such parts --if indeed they are extant --are uncatalogued and the writer did not have access to the stacks. The hand-copied text books vary in shape and size but their average size is a broad oblong seven inches long and nine inches high. The texts published and sold by the theatres for the benefit of their audiences appeared in slender book form, a fraction of an inch thick, and about four inches long by six and three quarter inches tall.