Mozart's Figaro and Don Giovanni, Operatic Canon, and National

MARTIN NEDBAL Figaro and Don Giovanni in Prague Mozart’s Figaro and Don Giovanni, Operatic Canon, and National Politics in Nineteenth-Century Prague MARTIN NEDBAL Between 1874 and 1916, the Czech opera en- considered one of the most important symbols semble in Prague celebrated the birthday of the of Bohemia’s cultural and intellectual refine- Austro-Hungarian emperor Franz Joseph I ev- ment ever since the late eighteenth century. In ery 18 August with a special opera performance their reports about late-nineteenth-century preceded by the national anthem and accompa- Czech performances of Don Giovanni and Le nied by special, festive lighting. The choice of nozze di Figaro, Prague’s theater critics repeat- opera varied, but most often it was an original edly mention the festive, celebratory atmo- Czech work, most prominently one by Bedˇrich sphere that supposedly electrified the audiences Smetana (his The Bartered Bride and Dalibor in the theater.1 For over two centuries, more- were performed on two occasions, Two Wid- ows on three, and The Kiss on four). The only two foreign operas used by the Czech ensemble 1This is the case especially with the reviews of Le nozze di to celebrate their emperor more than once were Figaro at the Provisional Theater between 1865 and 1883 Verdi’s Ernani (in 1874 and 1880) and Mozart’s in the journals Naˇse listy, Národní listy, and Politik, as well as the musical magazines Dalibor and Slavoj. Some Le nozze di Figaro (in 1876 and 1883). Whereas reports are so enthusiastic as to exaggerate the festivity of Ernani was most likely chosen for its depiction the performances. For example, in his review of the first of the magnanimous Habsburg emperor Charles performance of Le nozze di Figaro at the Provisional The- ater on 26 January 1865 in Národní listy, Bedˇrich Smetana V, Le nozze di Figaro symbolized important complains that the attendance was not very high, whereas aspects of Czech cultural identity in relation to the more conservative journal Politik announces that the imperial Austria. Together with Don Giovanni audience appeared in quite large numbers. “Divadlo. ‘Figarova svatba’ od Mozarta,” Národní listy, 28 January (which was used to celebrate the Emperor in 1865 and “Theater: Böhmische Oper,” Politik, 28 January 1888), Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro has been 1865. 19th-Century Music, vol. 41, no. 3, pp. 183–295 ISSN: 0148-2076, electronic ISSN 1533-8606. © 2018 by the Regents of 183 the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www.ucpress.edu/ journals.php?p=reprints. https://doi.org/10.1525/ncm.2018.41.3.183. 19TH over, numerous Bohemian critics and musi- German language, which they viewed as more CENTURY MUSIC cologists have pointed out that it was only in advanced, universal, and therefore superior to Prague that Mozart’s masterpieces could re- the Czech language. Late-nineteenth-century ceive the acclaim they truly deserved; in con- Czech and German productions of Le nozze di nection to Le nozze di Figaro, the critics em- Figaro and Don Giovanni, furthermore, illus- phasized gleefully that in Vienna the opera was trate the rise of exclusively ethnic viewpoints more or less shunned and even overshadowed that made cultural exchange between the two by the temporary success of Martin y Soler’s groups nearly impossible. Una cosa rara.2 For nineteenth-century Prague’s Philipp Ther has placed the beginning of in- intellectuals, enthusiastic reception of Mozart’s tense national appropriations of Mozart and Figaro and Don Giovanni and the narratives other “classics” in Prague into the 1880s, but about the misunderstood genius finding much- in fact the process started much earlier.4 For needed solace in Prague soothed the pain of Prague’s German speakers the two operas be- living in a city of ancient glory that was never- came powerful symbols of regional identity from theless of secondary importance ever since the the late eighteenth century on, particularly in Habsburg emperors moved their court to Vienna relation to other German communities in Cen- in the early seventeenth century. tral Europe. By contrast, those attempting to Besides the ambiguous relationship to Vienna establish modern Czech language and culture and the Habsburg imperial institutions, the re- in the 1820s used Mozart and his operas to ception of Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni overcome German artistic and intellectual in nineteenth-century Prague also reflected the dominance and establish a classical basis for processes by which the city’s increasingly alien- national forms of artistic expression. An in- ated Czech and German communities con- valuable resource for the study of Mozart re- structed their national and ethnic identities.3 ception in nineteenth-century Prague is the col- In their discussions of Mozart, early-nineteenth- lection of theater posters in the Czech Na- century Czech cultural elites viewed the Ger- tional Museum, which scholars have previously man element as alien to the essence of Bohemia, studied only as a source of information about despite the benefits and support they received Czech-language, not German-language culture from Bohemian-German institutions. Prague’s of Prague.5 The specificities of Czech and Ger- German-speaking elites, by contrast, embraced man approaches to Le nozze di Figaro and Don the concept of so-called utraquist patriotism, Giovanni throughout the nineteenth century according to which Bohemia was a region with are also illuminated by libretto translations and two languages that could nevertheless be uni- conducting and prompter’s scores associated fied by a single cultural identity. Yet, for many with Prague’s productions of the operas between German-speaking intellectuals this Bohemian 1825 and 1887 and preserved in Prague’s ar- identity was based on the preeminence of the chives. Beyond elements pertaining specifically to the history of Bohemian culture, the reception 2See, for example, the review of Smetana’s 1868 produc- of Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni in tion of Le nozze di Figaro at the Provisional Theater in “Literatura a umˇení. Divadlo,” Naˇse listy, 10 November 1868. The fact that Figaro was more successful in Prague than in Vienna appears already in Niemetschek’s 1798 4Philipp Ther, Center Stage: Operatic Culture and Nation biography, though Niemetschek ascribes the failure of the Building in Nineteenth-Century Central Europe, trans. opera in Vienna to the intrigues of the Italian singers. See Charlotte Hughes-Kreuzmüller (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue Franz Xaver Niemetschek, Lebensbeschreibung des k. k. University Press, 2014), 239. Kapellmeisters Mozart, aus Originalquellen (Prague, 1798), 5These posters were the main resource for Miroslav Laiske’s 25. Also, Paul Nettl discusses the fact that Figaro was not list of the Czech, not German, theater repertoire in Prague very successful in Vienna in Mozart in Böhmen (Prague: up to 1862. Miroslav Laiske, Praˇzská dramaturgie: Cˇ eská Neumann, 1938), 81. divadelní pˇredstavení v Praze do otevˇrení Prozatimního 3An overview of the more or less subtle shifts in the un- divadla, 2 vols. (Prague: Ústav pro ceskouˇ a svˇetovou derstanding of the term “nation” in early-nineteenth-cen- literaturu Cˇ SAV, 1974). Many thanks to Markéta Tráv- tury Bohemia can be found in Pieter Judson, The Habsburg níˇcková and Kryˇstof Vanˇca from the Czech National Mu- Empire: A New History (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2016), seum for their assistance in researching this poster collec- 85–88. tion. 184 nineteenth-century Prague also reveals strong and Don Giovanni had achieved canonic status MARTIN NEDBAL but often complicated links between national- already in the late eighteenth century: Mozart’s Figaro and Don ism and the processes of constructing the mu- operas received more performances in Prague Giovanni in sical, and more specifically operatic, canon. Ever than elsewhere, Prague became an important Prague since Lydia Goehr’s seminal study, The Imagi- center for producing commercial copies of nary Museum of Musical Works, scholars have Mozart’s operas, and certain Prague intellectu- been exploring the connections between musi- als attempted to create “definitive” versions of cal canons and the concept of musical au- these works (see below).11 In the late 1700s, tonomy.6 William Weber and Mark Evan Bonds, however, in Prague as elsewhere in Europe, the for example, have discussed some of the politi- original forms of Mozart’s operas were often cal aspects behind musical canons’ construc- replaced in performance by various adaptations tions.7 But as Roger Parker has pointed out, few that more or less departed from how Mozart studies exist that address the role opera played and Da Ponte originally conceived the works. in the rise to prominence of the idea that musi- This article explores how nineteenth-century cal culture consists predominantly of autono- Prague’s intellectuals and artists started to turn mous musical works that need to be continu- away from these adaptations in attempts to ally displayed in performance spaces similar to construct and sharpen the image of Le nozze di museum objects.8 Furthermore, most scholars Figaro and Don Giovanni as semi-autonomous who explore the formation of the operatic canon musical works to be presented in forms that in connection to national politics focus on the were as close as possible to what was deemed second half of the nineteenth century.9 Rachel the venerated author’s original idea. I will also Cowgill’s study of early-nineteenth-century show that in Prague the emergence of concept- Mozart reception in London shows that work- ualizations of operas as autonomous works and oriented approaches to Mozart’s operas became the attendant idea of Werktreue (i.e., fidelity to prominent in the British capital in the 1820s an authoritative score or text) were closely re- but were connected purely to commercialism lated to the rise of patriotic and nationalist and Romantic aesthetics, not politics and so- sentiments.

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