Romantic Opera and the Move Beyond Spoken Dialogue in the 1820S

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Chapter 3 “Die Oper erheben zu größerer Einheit”: Romantic Opera and the Move beyond Spoken Dialogue in the 1820s

In many of the Freischütz reviews discussed in the first chapter, one finds the conviction that this opera would form the decisive breakthrough of German opera, and lead the way towards new national works. But to many col- leagues of Weber, Der Freischütz formed a conclusion of an era rather than a point of departure. Whereas many German operas had aimed at a further Romanticization of the genre, these attempts had always remained within the confines of Singspiel with its characteristic alternation of sung numbers and spoken dialogue. Some scholars consider the Singspiel structure to have com- promised Der Freischütz’s Romantic potential, for example Eberhard Kremtz in his interpretation of Hoffmann’s glorification of Spontini: “It is very probable that Hoffmann had realized that Der Freischütz actually led away from the goal of a Romantic opera, and was only forward-looking in some single respects, whereas the work as a whole actually formed the conclusion and apotheosis of a different development, that of the German Singspiel.”1 Kremtz seems to imply that the true goal of Romantic opera after 1821, at least for Hoffmann, was to develop into an all-sung genre in the spirit of Gluck, his French followers, and particularly the contemporary example of Spontini. But how did this affect the initial core of Romantic opera theory, the co-existence and interdependence of a normal and a supernatural world? Had the Sing- spiel, with its alternation of music and spoken dialogue, not been the perfect vehicle for depicting the oscillation between these worlds? Was the apparent triviality of the Singspiel style not actually facilitating Romanticization, as Dent saw Romantic opera as “derived from comic opera and not from opera seria,” and considered “the glorification of the trivial” to be “one of the most curious aspects of Romanticism”?2 Had not the elimination of “trivial” comic action in Hoffmann’s Undine in fact deprived this Singspiel of its theatrical life- blood, as Schläder stated?3 And to conclude, did not the Singspiel perfectly embody the intersection of German and Romantic opera, because the spoken

1 Kremtz 1995B: 115. 2 Dent 1976: 15–16. 3 See Section 2.2.4.

ROMANTIC OPERA & THE MOVE BEYOND SPOKEN DIALOGUE IN THE 1820S 103 dialogue defined the character of German opera to a far greater extent than that of France, where opéras comiques co-existed with a considerable tradition of operas with recitatives? This chapter is concerned with the question what was left of the Romantic opera ideal once German opera composers decided to move beyond spoken dialogue. The first composer who propagated a move towards the “grand” style of Spontini was E.T.A. Hoffmann, in his extensive series of articles on the opera Olympie,4 published in the Zeitung für Theater und Musik zur Unterhaltung gebildeter, unbefangener Leser between June and September 1821. Already during his work on Aurora, Hoffmann’s aversion to spoken dialogue was re- trievable from his writings, as well as his desire to realize a fusion of opera seria, French opera and Romantic opera in a “große romantische Oper.” Whereas he saw his ideal chiefly realized in works of the past, especially those of Gluck, he was pessimistic with regard to current grand opera of Spontini and others. By 1821, however, Hoffmann had come to believe that “the operas prior to Olympia − La Vestale and Fernand Cortez − had convincingly shown that Spontini’s compositions aim at nothing less than dramatic expression in its highest strength and perfection.”5 Hoffmann voiced his expectation that Spon- tini would create convincing works for the German audience: “Spontini is now in Germany, is here in Berlin, and we cannot only hope, we may indeed expect that he will compose operas for us, operas that belong to the invisible church that is built on nothing less than the truthful in its purest integrity.”6 The reference to an invisible church seems to grant Spontini’s music the meta- physical depth so crucial to Romantic music esthetics and, to quote Miller, to “incorporate the composer into the canon of immortal greats of music, that of Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.”7 Although in 1821, Spontini was certainly the most famous opera composer working on German soil, he was not the only artist who wrote German-language

4 A work that Spontini had composed for Paris (1819) and that was performed in Berlin in 1821 to introduce the newly appointed Generalmusikdirektor to a Prussian audience. E.T.A. Hoffmann translated the French original verses into German. 5 “Die der Olympia vorhergegangenen Opern, die Vestalin und Cortez, haben schon auf das überzeugendste dargethan, daß Spontinis Kompositionen nichts wollen, nichts beabsichtigen als den dramatischen Ausdruck in seiner höchsten Stärke und Vollendung.” Istel 1907: 283. 6 “Spontini ist jetzt in Deutschland, ist jetzt hier in Berlin, […] und nicht die Hoffnung, nein, die gewisse Erwartung können wir aus dem Wesen der drei Meisterwerke, die den Reihen eröffnet, schöpfen, daß er für uns Opern komponieren wird, die zugleich der unsichtbaren Kirche angehören werden, deren Glieder, von dem himmlischen Feuer der Kunst durchglüht, nichts wollen als das Wahrhaftige in der reinsten Integrität.” Ibid.: 296. 7 Miller 1980: 454.