Noteson the Program

NOTES ON THE PROGRAM By James M. Keller, Program Annotator The Leni and Peter May Chair Overture to Genoveva, Op. 81 Robert Schumann ike Beethoven before him, Robert Schu - is that which has nothing to do with the stage at Lmann was often stimulated by intentions to all, namely the Overture.” In a sense he was write an opera but only once managed to fulfill right that it was largely unconnected to the that goal. In his case the opera was Genoveva, opera. Whereas opera composers at the time which met with very moderate success in its would be more likely to write their overtures last, time and has never found a place in the main - perhaps incorporating material from the ensu - stream repertoire, notwithstanding the excite - ing action, Schumann wrote his before any other ment generated by its occasional revivals. music had taken shape. A few of its phrases are Near the end of March 1847, the Schumanns revisited later in the opera, but on the whole it (Robert; his wife, Clara, the eminent pianist; seems more occupied with foreshadowing a and their two oldest children) returned to their mood rather than any specific episodes. In fact, home in Dresden from a concert tour. In his on- it led a life apart from the beginning, since by the-road diary entry for March 15, Robert ex - the time the opera was premiered, on June 25, pressed his “desire to write operas — plans.” He 1850 (in Leipzig), the Overture had already wasted no time acting on this impulse, and within a week of arriving home in Dresden he IN SHORT settled on Friedrich Hebbel’s play Genoveva as the subject matter. The drama centers on a me - Born: June 8, 1810, in Zwickau, Saxony dieval tale. Siegfried, the Count Palatine, de - (Germany) parts on a crusade, leaving his new wife, Genevieve of Brabant, under the care of his Died: July 29, 1856, in Endenich, near Bonn, knight Golo. The knight tries to seduce Germany Genevieve, who resists, and he then spreads word that it was she who tried to seduce him . Work composed: sketched in April 1847, Siegfried, learning of Genevieve’s presumed in - orchestrated at the end of the year, from fidelity, sentences her to death. Complications December 17–26 ensue, abetted by sorcery, a ghost, and a magic World premiere: June 25, 1850, in Leipzig, mirror. A mute child providentially saves with the composer leading the Gewandhaus Genevieve from execution just in time for Orchestra Siegfried to return and reunite with his wife, their happiness extolled by all the citizenry. New York Philharmonic premiere: March 16, Schumann began at the beginning, by sketch - 1861, Carl Bergmann, conductor ing the Overture in the course of just three days in early April, even before he drew up the opera’s Most recent New York Philharmonic scenario. It is the only section of Genoveva that performance: May 8, 2003, Kurt Masur, conductor would be embraced in posterity. The critic Ed - uard Hanslick wrote, “The best part of the opera Estimated duration: ca. 8 minutes MAY 2016 | 31 received stand-alone concert performances in Beethoven had done in his inescapable Fifth both Leipzig and Hamburg. Symphony. If it were somewhat elongated, the Overture The brooding opening transitions into a fast could stand as the first movement of a Schu - section that picks up steam over several mea- mann symphony; it resembles the composer’s sures before galloping off with full force. From characteristic symphonic sound in the denseness that point on the piece unrolls as a sonata-form of its orchestration, which includes a good deal movement, with the second theme being a of doubled woodwind lines. The opening meas - hearty ultra-Romantic call from the horn sec - ure yields a harmonic shocker: a dominant sev - tion. A surprise comes when Schumann recalls enth chord surmounted by a minor ninth (a material from the introduction, which listeners dominant minor-ninth chord, we might say), will have assumed they had heard the last of which, though marked pianissimo , emphasizes once the fast section got underway. By the time the dissonant minor –ninth interval through a it ends, the Overture has worked itself into a sforzando in the violins. The resolution that frenzy, and the minor ninths have become sonority demands arrives in the fourth measure, major ninths, suggesting an ecstatic outpour - placed firmly in C minor. On the largest scale, ing in the place of the menacing gloom that had the concern of the Overture is to move from the flavored the opening. troubled darkness of C minor to the triumphant brilliance of C major — a trajectory that would Instrumentation: two flutes, two oboes, two encapsulate a certain musical holiness to Schu - clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trum - mann’s con temporaries as it echoes what pets, three trombones, timpani, and strings. Sources and Inspirations It is no surprise that Robert Schumann felt inspired to try his hand at opera, the domain in which literary and musical pursuits coalesce on the largest scale. He was born into a thoroughly literary world, his father being a bookseller and lexicographer who founded a pub - lishing house, penned novels about chivalric romance, and produced successful translations of Scott, Byron, and Shakespeare. Already at the age of 20, he was fired up by the idea of compos - ing an operatic version of Hamlet . This never came to fruition, and neither did dozens of other subjects that waft through his diaries and correspondence as possibilities during ensuing years. A common thread that winds through this list of 50-odd non-starters is that nearly all of them involve texts of acknowledged literary status, in - cluding the Nibelungenlied , the tales of Till Eulenspiegel, the love stories of Tristan and Isolde and of Abélard and Héloïse, the legends of King Arthur, Homer’s Odyssey , Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Romeo and Juliet , Schiller’s Mary Stuart , Byron’s The Corsair , and Goethe’s Faust (which did take form as the dramatic oratorio Scenen aus Göthe’s Faust ). Genoveva in the Forest Seclusion by Adrian Ludwig Richter, ca. 1840, a depiction of the medieval tale that inspired Schumann’s opera 32 | NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC .

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