UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI Date:___________________ I, _________________________________________________________, hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of: in: It is entitled: This work and its defense approved by: Chair: _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ OPERA, THE NATION, AND THE IDEOLOGY OF GENRE IN EARLY NINETEENTH-CENTURY GERMANY A thesis submitted to the Division of Graduate Studies and Research of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF MUSIC in the Division of Composition, Musicology, and Theory of the College-Conservatory of Music 2004 by Kevin Robert Burke B.M. Appalachian State University, 2002 Committee Chair: Dr. Hilary Poriss ABSTRACT Historians have struggled with how to define German opera of the early-nineteenth century. Those who adopt “German Romantic opera” as the sole designator of German opera tend to focus on canonical works, purporting a teleological culmination with Wagner’s operas. These approaches, however, fail to account for concurrent explorations with German Grand opera and comic opera. This thesis investigates some historiographic problems and proposes a contextual approach tied in with national identity for reassessing German opera in the early nineteenth century. Theories of Anthony Smith and Benedict Anderson, among others, help to explore themes of national identity in works of three overlooked or misrepresented composers: Louis Spohr, Heinrich Marschner, and Albert Lortzing. Spohr intended his opera Jessonda to fulfill a prescription for national opera outlined in his essay, “Appeal to German Composers.” By calling for the removal of foreign elements and for the integration of national ones, Spohr’s strategy resembles Aristotle’s view on how theater morally affects audiences through a catharsis of purgation and clarification. Several scholars have argued that national writings often employ gendered language. The gendering of the nation as feminine in much nationalist discourse suggests how an individual’s national identity relates to sexual identity. Marschner’s Hans Heiling presents several fictional characters that react to constructions of gender in nineteenth-century life. Shifts in social structure in the age of revolution created a more unified, nationally conscious middle class. An analysis of Lortzing’s Czar und Zimmermann shows mediation between comic opera and art music for the emerging middle class. Copyright 2004, Kevin Robert Burke ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A University Summer Research Grant enabled me to complete this project in a timely manner. I wish to thank my committee members Dr. N. Kelly Hale and Dr. Mary Sue Morrow for their insightful comments and helpful suggestions. A very special thanks goes to my thesis advisor, Dr. Hilary Poriss, who oversaw this project from the beginning with her expertise and guidance. Above all, I’d like to thank my father for showing me how to set goals and meet them, and my mother for encouraging me to be a critical thinker. CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ii LIST OF CD TRACKS iii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1 The Historiography of German Opera 3 Theories of National Identity 14 German Opera and National Identity 17 Introduction to Case Studies 28 CHAPTER TWO: NATIONAL IDENTITY THROUGH CATHARSIS 29 CHAPTER THREE: GENDERING A NATIONAL OPERA 48 CHAPTER FOUR: NATIONAL OPERA AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE 65 CONCLUSION 83 BIBLIOGRAPHY 86 APPENDIX 91 i LIST OF FIGURES AND EXAMPLES 1.1 Excerpt from John Warrack’s German Opera Appendix 1.2 A. B. Marx’s Classification of Musico-Dramatic Genres 1.3 A. B. Marx’s Classification of Opera in Opposing Terms 2.1 Jessonda: No. 2 Recitative “Du hast dem Opfer dich entzogen” 2.2 Jessonda: No. 13 Recitative “Mein teurer Freund, ich teile dein Gefühl” 2.3 Jessonda: No. 12 Aria “Der Kriegestlust ergeben” (text) 2.4 Il barbiere di Siviglia: Finale “Di sì felice innesto” 2.5 Jessonda: No. 28 Finale “Mein Schritt, beflügelt von Entzücken” (chorale) 3.1 Hans Heiling: No. 3 Aria “An jenem Tag” 3.2 Hans Heiling: No. 14 Aria “Es nahet die Rache” 3.3 Hans Heiling: No. 7 Finale “Wir hupft mir von Freuden das Herz” 3.4 Hans Heiling: Vorspiel “Genug! Beendet euer emsig Treiben” 4.1 Czar und Zimmermann: No. 1 Introduction “Greifet an, greifet an und rührt die Hände” 4.2 Czar und Zimmermann: No. 15 Duet “Darf eine niedre Magd es wagen” 4.3 Czar und Zimmermann: No. 3 Recitative “Verraten! Von euch verraten” 4.4 Czar und Zimmermann: No. 3 Aria “Die Macht das Zepters” 4.5 Czar und Zimmermann: No. 4 Aria “O sancta justitia! Ich möchte rasen” 4.6 Czar und Zimmermann: No. 4 Cantabile “Diese ausdrucksvollen Züge” ii CD TRACKS 1. Jessonda Recitative “Mein teurer Freund, ich teile dein Gefühlt” 0:00–0:25 2. Jessonda Aria “Der Kriegeslust ergeben” 0:00–0:48 3. Jessonda Finale “Mein Schritt, beflügelt von Entzücken” 4:08–4:35 4. Hans Heiling Aria “An jenem Tag” 0:00–0:15 1:30–1:58 5. Hans Heiling Aria “Es nahet die Rache” 9:38–9:50 6. Hans Heiling Finale “Wir hupft mir vor Freuden das Herz” 2:15–2:24 7. Hans Heiling Vorspiel “Genug! Beendet euer emsig Treiben” 13:45–14:26 8. Czar und Zimmermann Introduction “Greifet an und rührt die Hände” 0:00–0:36 9. Czar und Zimmermann Duet “Darf eine niedre Magd es wagen” 1:30–1:40 10. Czar und Zimmermann Recitative and Aria “Verraten!” 0:00–0:26 2:48–3:06 11. Czar und Zimmermann Aria “O sancta justitia!” 0:45–1:02 4:38–5:00 iii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Here nature has made a new chain, the transmission from nation to nation! Arts, sciences, culture and languages have in a long procession refined themselves and have defined nations—nations which are the first link of the progression provided by nature.1 -Johann Gottfried Herder What makes German Romantic Opera distinctively German? Is it simply the language, or are there features of the libretto—like supernatural, chivalric and medieval themes—and the music that clearly separate it in style and substance from contemporary Italian and French opera? Can German operas manifest characteristics of foreign styles without losing their essential Germanness? These questions come to mind when comparing works like Weber’s Der Freischütz and Wagner’s Tannhaüser with operas of their contemporaries in France and Italy. Stephen Meyer believes that “German opera did have a distinct voice, despite its dependence on foreign models.” 2 As Meyer recognizes, this claim becomes problematic because one can hardly find a German opera composer who was not heavily influenced by foreign models in his/her own opera compositions. In his study of Weber’s translation of Méhul’s Joseph into German, Meyer explains that themes in the opera’s plot conform to the sentiments of post-Napoleanic German nationalism. Meyer feels that Méhul’s dramatic use of orchestral motives and ensemble writing “foreshadows similar techniques in Weber’s operas.”3 1 Harold James, A German Identity (New York: Routledge, 1989), 40. 2 Stephen Meyer, Carl Maria von Weber and the Search for German Opera (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 51. 3 Ibid., 73. Another concern with defining or recognizing a unique German operatic genre is that opera did not occupy the minds of German critics; they were more concerned with instrumental works. According to Mary Sue Morrow, at the turn of the century the German “aesthetic preference for vocal music, especially opera, that pervaded the world of the German Enlightenment gave way to an exalted view of the powers of purely instrumental composition.”4 Critics of instrumental works made up the majority of those who propagated these ideas. There is no doubt, however, that members of the educated class promoted absolute instrumental music as an art for Germany, whereas opera was a genre more commonly associated with Italy and France. Why then, would there even be a need for a German national opera? An understanding of German Romantic opera is as difficult for us as it was for contemporary German writers; David Charlton maintains that, “‘Opera’ meant no one single type of theater in 1813.”5 Thus historians of German opera have faced the challenge of interpreting these inconsistencies. The difficulties in establishing German Romantic opera’s meaning and significance within Western art music history are evident in its history and historiography—how historians and other writers on music have inconsistently struggled to define it with models used for identifying other musical phenomena. 4 Mary Sue Morrow, German Music Criticism in the Late Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 1. 5 David Charlton, E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 173. 2 The Historiography of German Opera Scholars do not always treat German Romantic opera as a distinct entity. Inconsistent treatments of German Romantic opera in its history and historiography have made it difficult to establish its parameters as a genre. Those who have attempted to define German Romantic opera directly have done so in varying manners. Winton Dean describes the history of German Romantic opera, for instance, as one largely concerned with the symbolic, the supernatural, and with solving the problem of through-composition.6 Often historians have tried to explain it by comparing it to other genres. Carl Dahlhaus chose to do so alongside opéra comique in order to link the two to a larger aesthetic concern: German romantic opera and French opéra comique, then, shared a complex of features that included not only an attraction to folk music but also a predilection for picturesque songs and choruses and a fondness for colorful timbres, tone painting, and descriptive orchestral music. As a whole this complex may be understood as a musical offshoot of an idea taken from aesthetics: the Characteristic.7 Other historians define German Romantic opera by what makes it different than other genres.