Thus Spoke Friedrich Nietzsche: Piano Music

by Georg Predota, Interlude

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) is primarily known as a philosopher who published some groundbreaking books. “Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None,” was published in four volumes between 1883 and 1885, and it spawned a number of philosophical and theological contemplations. Not to mention a gigantic tone poem by Richard Strauss!

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche at 21

Essentially, Nietzsche questioned the value and objectivity of truth, looking at God as a historical process and construct. Nietzsche wrote numerous texts on morality, contemporary culture, philosophy and science. Interestingly, he never really trusted the written word. He wrote, “all communication through words is shameless. The word diminishes and makes stupid; the word depersonalises, the word makes what is uncommon common.”

It might come as a surprise, but music was actually Nietzsche’s true love. Descended from a family of pastors where music and theology went hand in hand, young Friedrich was an accomplished pianist and organist by the time he reached the age of seven. At that age, he already played several Beethoven sonatas, transcriptions of Haydn Symphonies, and he was skilled in the way of improvisation. A couple of recent recordings have engaged with Nietzsche’s piano compositions, so we decided to take a closer look.

Reminiscences on my Life

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Young Nietzsche initially improvised his own melodies, yet he soon moved on to sketch motets, symphonies, masses and oratorios, most of them unfinished. As he grew up, Nietzsche switched to smaller forms, particularly Lieder and piano pieces. As pianist Jeroen van Veen writes, “these pieces reflect the philosopher as a human being, vulnerable and desirous, but above all melancholic.”

At the age of 14, Nietzsche wrote his “Reminiscences on my Life.” He explained, “All qualities are united in music: it can lift us up, it can be capricious, it can cheer us up and delight us, nay, with its soft, melancholy tunes, it can even break the resistance of the toughest character.”

“Its main purpose, however, is to lead our thoughts upward so that it elevates us and even deeply moves us. All humans who despise it should be considered mindless, animal-like creatures. Let music, this most marvellous gift from God, remain forever my companion on the pathways of life.” 

Barbarous Frenzy

In his “Reminiscences on my Life,” Nietzsche carefully listed his writings and his compositions, and at age fourteen, he had 46 compositions to his name. The earliest Lieder settings of Klaus Groth, the Hungarian poet Sándor Petöfi, Pushkin and Hoffmann von Fallersleben, were all composed “in a kind of barbarous frenzy, as the demon of music took hold of me.”

Nietzsche never took composition lessons, as he was essentially self-taught. He described himself as “a wretched youth who tortured his piano to the point of drawing from it cries of despairs, who with his own hands heave up in front of himself the mire of the most dismal greyish-brown harmonies.” 

The Germania

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

At the age of 16, Nietzsche started on a Christmas oratorio that was never finished. However, he would develop several themes for later use in subsequent compositions. “I look for words for a melody that I have and for a melody for words that I have, and these two things I have don’t go together, even though they come from the same soul. But such is my fate.”

Nietzsche’s early piano music is frequently dedicated to family and friends. Together with two young friends, he founded a small society called “The Germania,” which was dedicated to the “development of the spirit.” They would send each other compositions and poems, lectures and articles. And Nietzsche loved to improvise. A fellow student listened to these improvisations and wrote, “I should have no difficulty in believing that even Beethoven did not play extempore in a more moving manner.” 

Assessment

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche’s Hungarian March

However, assessment from professional sources was less encouraging. Nietzsche sent Hans von Bülow, son-in-law of Richard Wagner, his “Manfred Meditation” for evaluation. Bülow was not impressed and wrote, “this music is the most extreme in fantastic extravagance and the most unsatisfying and most anti-musical composition I have seen in a long time. Is this a joke that deliberately mocks all rules of tonal harmony, of the higher syntax as well as of ordinary orthography?”

“In musical terms, this piece is the equivalent to a crime in the moral world, with which the musical muse, Euterpe, was raped. If you would allow me to give you some good advice, just in case you are actually serious with your aberration into the area of composition, stick with composing vocal music, since the word can lead the way on the wild sea of tones. I apologize, esteemed Herr Professor, of having thrown such an enlightened mind as yours, into such regrettable piano cramps.” 

Lou Salomé

Lou Salomé

Nietzsche’s “Hymn to Life” is based on a text by Lou Salomé, a Russian-born psychoanalyst, well-travelled author, narrator, and essayist. At a literary salon in the city, Salomé met the author Paul Rée, who instantly proposed to her. Salomé declined and suggested setting up an academic commune, which was joined by Nietzsche in April 1882. He instantly fell in love with her as well, but she rejected him twice. Instead, Salomé, Rée, and Nietzsche travelled in search of setting up their commune in an abandoned monastery, but as no suitable location was found, the plan came to naught.

We do find an interesting assessment of Nietzsche by Salomé, which reads, “The higher he rose as a philosopher in his exaltation of life, the more deeply he suffered, as a human being, from his own teachings about life. This battle within his soul, the true source of the philosophy of his last years, is only imperfectly represented in his words and books, but it sounds perhaps most profoundly through his music to my poem Hymn to Life.” 

Sabbatical

After completing the “Hymn of Life” and receiving Bülow’s devastating letter, Nietzsche wrote, “As for my music, I only know that it allows me to master a mood that unsatisfied, would perhaps produce even more damage. If music serves only as a diversion or a kind of vain ostentation, it is sinful and harmful. Yet this fault is very frequent; all of modern music is filled with it.”

After receiving this letter, Nietzsche did not touch his piano for a while, but in the end, “his awareness of being an amateur was overshadowed by his urge to become a better person, through music,” writes Vrouwkje Tuinman. As Nietzsche frequently proclaimed, “Emotions, morals, the world: the only way to (maybe) grasp the essence of being is surrendering to the highest of art forms,” he writes again and again. “Without music, life would be a mistake.” 

The Affair Wagner

Richard Wagner

During his time as Professor of Philosophy at Basel University, Nietzsche became a close personal friend of Cosima and Richard Wagner, then living in Swiss exile. He was a regular house guest and even had his own room at Tribschen. We know that Nietzsche fell in love with Cosima Wagner, and he certainly composed some music for her.

Nietzsche dedicated his first book, “The Birth of Tragedy” to Wagner, proclaiming Wagner’s music the modern rebirth. The first part of the book was developed from long conversations between Cosima, Wagner and Nietzsche, roughly around the same time that Wagner began to develop the story of what eventually would become the “Ring Cycle.” 

Postlude

Cosima Wagner

Nietzsche offered Richard and Cosima his “Reminiscence of a New Year’s Eve,” but they basically ignored it. In turn, Nietzsche started to object to Wagner’s “endless melody,” suggesting that listening to Wagner’s music made his whole body feel discomfort. He called it “a music without a future,” and that the effects of Wagner’s music are “for idiots and the masses.”

Nietzsche suffered a mental breakdown at the age of 44, from which he never recovered. For the last eleven years of his life, he was no longer able to speak or write, but he continued to play the piano. Listening, performing and composing music became an unconscious philosophical activity for Nietzsche, who had suggested earlier that “sound allowed me to say certain things that words were incapable of expressing.”

Editors of Nietzsche considered his compositions “amateurish and lacking in originality.” However, composing for Nietzsche meant experimentation and therapy, as he famously wrote, “we have art so not to die from the truth.” His piano music continues to be explored, and scholars write that “these piano miniatures present a fascinating window into the creative mind of a still-lofty figure in Western thought.” To me, his piano music, an elaboration of the conflicted world of Schumann, sounds hesitant and even unguarded, and the occasional ray of optimism is quickly cast aside by all-pervasive melancholy.

Famous Father, Famous Son! Franz and Richard Strauss

By Georg Predota , Interlude

Famous musical sons frequently have famous musical fathers. And Richard Strauss is no exception. In his day, his father Franz was recognized as an important artistic personality. Foremost, he became a celebrated horn virtuoso, by “breathing soul into the unthankful instrument.” Even Richard Wagner, against whom the musically conservative Strauss took literally every opportunity to make his disapproval clear, recognized his unusual talent. “Old Strauss is an unbearable fellow, but when he plays the horn one can’t really mind him.” Franz Strauss became a member of the Royal Court Orchestra in Munich in 1847, and set new standards on his instruments for more than four decades. However, he also dabbled in composition, predictably centered on his favorite instrument.

Franz and Richard Strauss © Wikipedia

Franz Strauss quickly recognized his son’s musical talent and entrusted four and a half-year-old Richard to August Tombo for piano lesson. Before long Richard was able to play the tunes in a book of operatic arrangements, and successfully tackled a Mozart sonata. His older sister remembered, “Richard made swift progress. Sight-reading presented him with no problems. His teacher played with him a great deal, and there was one trick that delighted Richard. His teacher played the bass part with the left hand, the top line with his right hand and the middle part with the tip of his long pointed nose.” Richard first tried his hands at composition at the age of six, when he composed the Schneider-Polka (Tailor Polka) for piano. However, as he was not yet capable of writing music, his father wrote it down for him. 

Young Richard was described by his teacher as “a student with excellent dispositions, good deportment and well behaved; lively, enthusiastic, attentive, sometime over-eager and hasty.” By the time he was 18, Richard had composed roughly 140 compositions, including almost 60 songs and more than 40 piano works. Much of these juvenilia pay homage to the musical creed of his father, who favored the “trinity of Mozart (most of all), Haydn and Beethoven.” The first time Richard heard a Beethoven symphony he did not understand it, he remained unmoved and even said, “he didn’t care of it.” Nor did he understand Beethoven’s sonatas and quartets at that stage. “In his piano lessons he preferred Chopin, Mendelssohn and Bach.” When Richard made his pianistic debut on 20 October 1885, however, he played the Mozart C-minor Concerto with his own cadenzas, which are unfortunately lost. Echoes of Mozart and the Classical style clearly emerge in his Serenade in E-flat for Thirteen Wind Instruments, Opus 7, dedicated to his composition teacher Franz Meyer. 

Franz Strauss ©hornarama.com

At age 21, Richard Strauss took up the post of assistant conductor of the Meiningen Orchestra. Hans von Bülow, a student of Franz Liszt and champion of the music of Richard Wagner and later Johannes Brahms had appointed him. To thank von Bülow, Richard composed a work for piano and orchestra originally titled “Scherzo in D minor.” Bülow considered it a “complicated piece of nonsense and unplayable” and refused to learn it. Strauss made some changes and renamed the work “Burleske” with Eugen d’Albert premiering the work in 1890. Bülow, however, was still not convinced and wrote to Johannes Brahms “Strauss’s Burleske decidedly has some genius in it, but in other respects it is horrifying.” 

Throughout his life, Richard Strauss had the highest admiration for Hans von Bülow. “For anyone who ever heard him play Beethoven or conduct Wagner, who attended one of his piano lessons or observed him in orchestra rehearsal, he inevitably became the model of all the shining virtues of a performing artist, and his touching sympathy for me, his influence on the development of my artistic abilities, were the decisive factors in my career.”

Richard Wagner - his music and his life

Richard Wagner (born May 22, 1813; February 13, 1883). No composer has had so deep an influence on the course of his art, before or since. Entrepreneur, philosopher, poet, conductor, one of the key composers in history and most remarkable men of the 19th century, Wagner knew he was a genius. He was also an unpleasant, egocentric and unscrupulous human being.

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Richard Wagner’s mother, Johanna, was the daughter of a baker in Weissenfels (though some papers show that she may have been the illegitimate daughter of Prince Friedrich Ferdinand Constantin of Weimar). At the time of Wagner’s birth, she was married to a police registrar named Karl Friedrich Wagner, who died when Richard was only six months old. Johanna had already been having an affair with Ludwig Geyer and had a daughter, Cäcilie, six months after they were married in 1814.

Geyer proved to be a profound influence on the young Wagner and surrounded him with books and paintings and, of course, introduced him to the theatre and music. Geyer died when Wagner was only eight but the seeds had been sown. It was literature that was the initial attraction, though, not music. Wagner was only 11 when he wrote a drama, drawn from Shakespeare and the Greeks, in which 42 characters died in the first four acts, and some of whom reappeared as ghosts in the fifth act.

His latent passion for music was aroused by a performance of Weber’s Der Freischütz; when he heard Beethoven’s Fidelio for the first time at the Gewandhaus, Leipzig, music became an obsession. He made arrangements of Beethoven’s symphonies, began to absorb scores and produced his first compositions: two orchestral overtures. These were premiered in Leipzig in 1829, the first works of Wagner to be performed. And all this before he had had any formal training.

A rebellious spirit

His future character traits were beginning to emerge – a rebel who was expelled from the Thomasschule in Leipzig and who was more concerned with duelling, drinking, gambling and women than his law studies at the University of Leipzig. During his brief sojourn there (he never took his degree), he became well known as a compulsive talker and for his dogmatic views.

In 1831 he left to undertake six fruitful months of studying counterpoint with the cantor of the Thomasschule. His teacher, Theodor Weinlig, admitted that after that period there was nothing more he could teach him. As far as we know, this was the only professional instruction he ever received. He did not have any further music lessons. Then Wagner struck out on his own, writing a symphony and three operas – Die Hochzeit and Die Feen to his own bloodcurdling librettos, and Das Liebesverbot based on Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure.

Musical disaster and poverty

At 22, Wagner was the conductor of a small opera house in Magdeburg. One reason for taking the job – the theatre was on the verge of bankruptcy – was his pursuit of a pretty young actress named Minna Planer. He was pursued by creditors claiming their gambling debts but in March 1836 the opera house produced Das Liebesverbot. It was such a fiasco that the theatre was empty at the second performance. It bankrupted the opera house. Wagner, overwhelmed with financial demands, left with Minna for a similar conducting post in Königsberg. They married in November 1836. The two of them then went on to Riga in Russian Poland to another opera post where they stayed unhappily for two years.

Eventually, Wagner was dismissed, hounded by creditors, his passport confiscated and he was forced to flee Russia via a smugglers’ route. At length, the couple arrived in Paris. From 1839 to 1842, he and Minna lived in abject poverty (on two occasions he was imprisoned for debt).

Building a reputation

But then came his first taste of success. His opera Rienzi, which he had begun in 1837, was accepted for production at the Dresden Opera. The opera, written in the approved Meyerbeer style, was a complete triumph and made Wagner’s name known throughout Germany.

Dresden next offered a production of Der fliegende Holländer, Wagner’s first tentative steps towards a new style of opera. It resulted in complete failure but in February 1843 Wagner was made director of the Dresden Opera. In the following six years he raised the standard of performance there to unprecedented heights in a series of painstakingly produced performances, including, in October 1845, the premiere of his own Tannhäuser. By 1848 he had almost completed a third operatic masterpiece, Lohengrin.

The Ring

That year was the year of revolution in Europe and its spirit had spread to Saxony by 1849. Wagner sided with the revolutionaries, producing radical pamphlets, making political speeches and sympathising with the rioters. When the revolution came to nothing he was forced to flee Germany and for the next 13 years he lived in exile in Zurich. Here, he formulated his revolutionary ideas about opera and the ‘music of the future’: the concept of ‘music drama’ involving a synthesis of all the arts. The plan that began to occupy his mind was a giant project of four dramas in which all his theories would be realised, an opera cycle called Der Ring des Nibelungen. It took him a quarter of century to complete it.

Meanwhile, Franz Liszt had mounted the world premiere of Lohengrin (Weimar, 1850). Its fabulous success made Wagner the most famous living composer of German opera, though he was unable to attend any performances of his work there. At one time he lamented that he was just about the only German who had never seen a performance of Lohengrin.

Tristan und Isolde

While working on The Ring, Wagner interrupted his labours with two other music dramas, Tristan und Isolde (1859) and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1867). The friendship and generosity of a wealthy silk merchant, Otto Wesendonck, allowed him to live in a luxurious villa in Zürich while he was working on The Ring and Tristan. The friendship and generosity were repaid by Wagner having a passionate affair with Otto’s wife, Mathilde.

Much of Tristan was written under her influence; she may even have been the inspiration for the work, though it’s just as likely that Wagner fell in love her because he was working on Tristan. Whatever, Tristan und Isolde is one of the most important works of the 19th century and its harmonic innovations exercised an enormous influence on the future of music, paving the way for Mahler and Schoenberg.

At length, the domestic situation in Zurich became impossible. Otto was fully aware of the situation and eventually provided funds for Wagner and Minna to travel to Paris in 1859. Wagner’s marriage had broken down irretrievably and soon a third married woman had entered his life.

Cosima

In 1862 Wagner fell in love with Cosima, the daughter of Franz Liszt and the wife of his friend and champion, the pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow. The mesmeric power Wagner exercised over his admirers is no better illustrated than by von Bülow. First, Wagner and Cosima had an illegitimate daughter named Isolde; they then had a second illegitimate daughter, Eva. Only then, and after Minna had conveniently died in 1866, did Cosima desert her husband and set up house with Wagner. Throughout, von Bülow remained devoted to Wagner and wrote to Cosima, ‘You have preferred to devote your life and the treasures of your mind to one who is my superior. Far from blaming you I approve your action from every point of view and admit you are perfectly right’.

Cosima was the woman for whom Wagner had been searching all his life, someone of great intelligence and independence of mind who would provide stability, adulation and understanding whenever it was needed. He remained with her for the rest of his life – well, nearly. After Wagner’s death, the imperious Cosima, born in 1837, became the guardian of the Wagner shrine and survived until as late as 1930.

Return to Germany

In the meantime, a political amnesty allowed Wagner to return to Germany in 1860. Four years later, his fortunes changed dramatically when the young King Ludwig II of Bavaria ascended the throne. He invited Wagner to Munich and promised him unlimited support for all his projects. It’s very likely he was in love with Wagner but, at any rate, a mutual admiration society flourished on a grand scale and, between 1865 and 1870, Munich was host to the world premieres of Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger, Das Rheingold and Die Walküre (the last two being the first completed sections of The Ring).

Ludwig’s lavish support of Wagner soon brought him into conflict with the Bavarian Cabinet, who advised that the whole economy would collapse if the King continued his patronage on such a reckless scale. They were also frightened by Wagner’s political dabbling and his hold over the King, scandalised by his morals (everyone knew about his relationship with Cosima) and observed this arrogant musician with more than a little concern.

Wagner retreated to a palatial estate on Lake Lucerne (paid for by Ludwig) where he was joined by Cosima. Here Eva was born (1867), and their first son Siegfried (1869). They eventually married in August 1870.

The building of Bayreuth

In 1871 Wagner announced plans for another gargantuan scheme. Not a music drama but a building, a special festival theatre where his works could be mounted under ideal conditions, produced to his own specifications. The council of the little Bavarian town of Bayreuth offered him a site and in May 1872 the cornerstone was laid.

It was a huge undertaking and Wagner characteristically took to realising his dream with extraordinary vigour and determination. No setback troubled him – he persuaded wealthy patrons to provide part of the subsidy, he conducted concerts to help raise money, King Ludwig coughed up 100,000 talers and, eventually, the Bayreuth Festival Theatre was unveiled on August 13, 1876.

The opening performance was the first complete presentation of the Ring cycle, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung receiving their world premieres. The event attracted world attention. Four thousand visitors were crammed into Bayreuth, including the Emperor and Empress of ­Germany, the Emperor and Empress of Brazil and Grand Duke Vladimir of Russia, along with other crowned heads and many of the greatest composers, including Tchaikovsky, Gounod, Saint-Saëns, Grieg and Liszt.

Such novelties as gas lighting linked to electric projectors and a magic lantern illuminating the Ride of the Valkyries matched the startling originality of the operas themselves. The festival made a huge deficit but at the closing party Wagner had the good grace to pay tribute to Liszt. He owed him, he said, everything. Today the Bayreuth theatre remains a living shrine to Wagner’s music and vision.

Basking in his fame, relative wealth and security (though money worries continued to nag), living in the comfort of the Villa Wahnfried a few miles from the festival theatre in Bayreuth, Wagner settled down to other things. He had a final fling with a married woman. This time it was the beautiful daughter of the poet Théophile Gautier, Judith, wife of the poet Catulle Mendès. Judith Mendès, who was 40 years younger than Wagner, actually moved into the Villa Wahnfried (Cosima turned a blind eye) before returning to her husband in 1878.

Poisonous views

Wagner finished his last opera or ‘consecrational play’, Parsifal, while producing a series of pamphlets and publications. In his all-embracing wisdom, he promulgated his lofty views on any number of topics. He believed the world could be saved if everyone ate vegetables instead of meat; he ranted on about racial purity – the Jews were former cannibals, Christ was not a Jew but an Aryan, the Aryans had sprung from the gods, and so forth – all the things which led Hitler to say ‘Whoever wants to understand National Socialist Germany must know Wagner’.

Death

In August 1882 Wagner conducted a performance of Parsifal. It was his last public appearance as a conductor. He was exhausted and began to have premonitions of death. Later in the year he, Cosima and their children travelled to Venice for a lengthy holiday. As a birthday gift to his wife, Wagner conducted a private performance of his youthful symphony in December 1882. It was his last musical act. Six weeks later he died of a massive heart attack. His body was brought back to Bayreuth, where it was buried in a vault in the garden of his villa to the strains of the funeral march from Götterdämmerung.

Incidentally, King Ludwig was faithful to the end to his ‘divine friend’, the man to whom he wrote, ‘I can only adore you…an earthly being cannot requite a divine spirit’. His mental state deteriorated and he was committed to an asylum. On June 13, 1883, three months to the day after Wagner’s death, Ludwig overpowered a psychiatrist who was escorting him on a walk and dragged him to the bottom of the Starnberg Lake, drowning himself in the process.

When the Hero isn’t Quite Heroic

The Clueless Heroes in Classical Operas

by Maureen Buja, Interlude

Throughout most of the opera, there are certain tropes that repeat and repeat: the heroine will die of some wasting disease (La Bohéme, La Traviata, etc.), the hero will save the day (Die Zauberflöte), and so on. There are some operas, however, where it’s the idiot or the simpleton who saves the day.

Richard Strauss: Guntram

In Richard Strauss’ unsuccessful opera Guntram, our title character is a minstrel. He first dissuades duchess Freihild from drowning herself. He then goes to her husband, Duke Robert, a grasping tyrant, and sings a song to peace and generous rulers, which doesn’t go over very well, and then urges rebellion against the duke. The duke attacks our minstrel, who turns out to be a knight-minstrel and slays the duke. While imprisoned, Guntram realizes that, although he spoke of liberation, he was really acting out of love for Freihild. He decides that in atonement, he will spend the rest of his life in solitude, while gazing upon the benevolent reign of Freihild.

Guntram (Heinrich Zeller) and Freihild (Pauline de Ahna), 1894, Weimar

Richard Wagner: Siegfried

This is Strauss at his most Wagnerian, and the minstrel (perhaps standing in for the composer) was an unusual hero for an opera. However, if we look at Wagner, we have another idiot hero. Siegfried is a boy from the forest. Raised by Mime the dwarf, Siegfried despises his foster father and declares that he only stays until Mime tells him about his childhood. Mime tells him about Sieglinde and Siegmund and how Sieglinde died giving birth to Siegfried. Only Siegfried, the ‘one who knows no fear,’ can forge the great sword Nothung and after slicing Mime’s anvil in half, goes off to fight Fafner, the dragon left over from the first Ring opera.

Jay Hunter Morris as Siegfried (Metropolitan Opera)

Siegfried, raised only by Mime, is such an innocent that when he gets to his pre-destined role in this opera, rescuing Brünnhilde from the ring of fire her father has imprisoned her in, that he unwittingly utters the funniest line in the entire Ring cycle: “Das ist kein Mann!” (That is no man!), as he removes her armour. He’s one of the rare slices first, ask questions later opera heroes.

Modest Mussorgsky: Boris Godunov

The opera Boris Godunov has a character called a ‘yuródivïy,’ i.e., a fool for Christ. These Holy Fools act intentionally foolish, to ‘conceal their perfection from the world.’ The yuródivïy appears in Act IV, chased by children and singing a nonsense song. As the Pretender readies himself for his march on Boris, the yuródivïy sings a song predicting the difficulties that the country will soon face (Flow, flow, bitter tears!).

Sam Furness as the Holy Fool in Boris Godunov, 2019 (The Royal Opera) (Photo by Clive Barda)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Die Zauberflöte

In Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, we have the unique character of Papageno. A bird-catcher by profession, he’s seemingly half-bird himself.

Emanuel Schikaneder, librettist of Die Zauberflöte, shown performing in the role of Papageno as shown in the first edition of the libretto

He’s not above lying to Tamino about how he killed the fearsome serpent, but when he’s pressed into service for our hero, he’s the first one to actually discover the kidnapped Pamina. Through the trial sequence, despite being told over and over to be silent, he can’t keep still. Banished from the test, he is saved by the appearance of his own half-bird woman, Papagena. We know that Tamino and Pamina will have a difficult intellectual life but that the two simpletons, Papagena and Papageno are only intending to have many, many, many children.

Papageno (Jonathan Michie) and Papagena (Hye-Jung Lee) and children (Florida Grand Opera)

Giuseppe Verdi: Falstaff

We could also consider Verdi’s Falstaff as the idiot hero – used to a life of pleasure when he hung around with Prince Hal, he’s no longer the center stage when Hal becomes King Henry. His attempts to seduce women end with him being thrown in the river with the laundry and his forest appearance as the ghost of Herne the Hunter, complete with stag horns.

Robert Smirke: Fallstaff with his horns

Idiots and half-men, religious fanatics and social innocents – all have their place in the world of opera.

Buried Treasures: Felix Mendelssohn: Concerto for Piano, Violin and Strings in D Minor (1822)

by Georg Predota 

Felix Mendelssohn

When Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) died at the incredibly young age of thirty-eight, he simply had not yet made arrangements for literally hundreds of unpublished musical manuscripts and artworks, alongside thousands of personal letters to and from the composer. During his lifetime, and for a short period thereafter — with a large number of music published during a period of two years following his death — Mendelssohn was almost universally lauded musical genius. What is more, Mendelssohn was also the artistic director and chief conductor of The Gewandhaus (Garment House) in Leipzig, a venue that has long been recognized as one of the most important performing centers in Europe. Under his tutelage and leadership, the Gewandhaus Orchestra became a cultural institution. Mendelssohn not only initiated the revival of music by Bach, Handel, Haydn and Mozart, he also assured that his brand of musical historicism was disseminated throughout Europe and beyond. With the help of Richard Wagner who declared “Judaism the evil conscience of our modern civilization” in his 1850 treatise Judaism in Music, Mendelssohn and his music were quickly subjected to deliberate and systematic forms of historical revisions. And when Wagner declared Mendelssohn’s music “an icon of degenerate decadence,” publishers far and wide declined to make his manuscripts and letters public.

Of course, Wagner was not able to completely erase or dismiss Mendelssohn’s influence on Germanic arts, nor was he able to excise him from music-historical memory. This, of course, led to serious irritation within the propaganda machinery of Nazi Germany, and his name was promptly added to various lists of forbidden artists. At that time, according to Stephen Somary, founder and artistic director of the Mendelssohn Project, “a majority of Mendelssohn manuscripts — both published and unpublished — were housed in the basement of the Berlin State Library. They were smuggled to Warsaw and Krakow during the winter of 1936/37, and when the city fell under Nazi control in 1939, they were hurriedly smuggled out again and disbursed to locations wide and far between.” Following WWII, the majority of manuscripts remained buried behind the Iron Curtain. Haltingly, various unknown versions and unknown compositions were discovered and made available in one form or another.

The Gewandhaus

Initially, these efforts focused on works Mendelssohn composed before his 14th birthday, pieces that had originally been presented at private concerts at the Mendelssohn home. Among them various sonatas for viola and for violin, religious choral music, numerous piano compositions and even a fourth opera. But it also included a succession of concertos, among them a concerto for piano and string orchestra in A minor (1822) and two concertos for two pianos and full orchestra in E and A-flat, originating from 1823 and 1824, respectively.

The concerto for violin, piano and string orchestra in D minor was composed for an initial private performance with his best friend and violin teacher Eduard Rietz. On 3 July 1822, Mendelssohn revised the scoring, adding timpani and winds and the premiere of this version was apparently performed on the same day. For reasons detailed above, it remained unpublished until 1960, when the Astoria Verlag in Berlin issued a miniature score, edited and arranged by Clemens Schmalstich. In 1966, Theodora Schuster-Lott and Frieder Zschoch prepared a scholarly edition for the Deutsche Verlag für Music as part of the new Mendelssohn complete edition, “which was engraved, but never published except in a reduction by Walter-Heinz Bernstein for violin and two pianos.” Finally, in 1999 the 1960 miniature score was reissued in a scholarly edition with the wind and timpani parts added. And just in case you are wondering, the A-minor Piano Concerto of 1822 had until recently been unavailable in any edition, and the Concerto for two pianos and orchestra in E major, composed as a birthday gift for his sister Fanny, had to wait until 2003 before audiences could get a listen to the original version.

10 of the greatest opera overtures of all time

10 of the best opera overtures. Picture: Getty / Alamy

By Siena Linton & Kyle Macdonald, ClassicFM

 

From the Marriage of Figaro to Carmen, here are ten of the most memorable musical beginnings to operas.

The lights in the theatre dim and a hush falls over the buzzing excitement of the audience, as the orchestra strikes up the first note.

A good opera overture sets the scene for the drama that’s about to unfurl, bringing the audience into the narrative world and suspending their reality for the next few hours.

A great opera overture does not only that, but stands tall as a piece of music in its own right, performed in concert repertoire by orchestras around the world.

Whether you’re just starting to dip your toe into the wonderful world of opera or have a lifetime membership at Glyndebourne, here are 10 of the absolute best opera overtures of all time.

1. Verdi – The Force of Destiny

   With a main theme made famous by the “Reassuringly expensive” Stella Artois TV campaign of the 1990s, this operatic opener is indeed “Reassuringly Verdi” with the Italian composer’s customary mix of exquisite melody and thundering full-orchestra outbursts.

   The opera’s iconic theme is a sinister melody known as the fate motif. It’s a powerful, almost cinematic tune. It’s heard first in this overture and then throughout the coming opera, which explores a journey of tragedy, love and loss – with some accidental murders and curses thrown in, because it’s, you know, a Verdi opera.

   
   

2. Mozart – The Magic Flute

   At the age of 28, Mozart joined the Masonic order, a secretive organisation with a rich set of rituals and symbols that many scholars believe are evident in Mozart’s later works, The Magic Flute being one of them. The number three holds significance within Freemasonry, and the overture to this opera alone has several allusions.

   Right from the start, three chords ring out, dominated by a chorus of three trombones. The overture is even in E flat major, which has three flats in its key signature. After its stately opening, a merry flurry of strings and countermelodies follow, becoming increasingly forceful with the addition of the rest of the orchestra. All in all, the perfect set up for an opera full of evil sorcerers, sprightly bird catchers, and enchanted instruments.

3. Rossini – William Tell

   The overture that broke the mould, Rossini’s William Tell Overture escaped the clutches of the classical world and flew into the mainstream. It appeared as the theme tune for The Lone Ranger and in the soundtracks for A Clockwork Orange and The Princess Diaries, as well as influencing Rossini’s fellow classical composers, Strauss I and Shostakovich.

   Comprising four parts, the flurrying finale is the section that is best known today, often used to depict galloping horses (despite the fact that not a single horse is featured in the opera itself).

   
   

4. Dame Ethel Smyth – The Wreckers

   After five years touring Europe trying to persuade theatre impresarios to stage it, Smyth’s best-known opera The Wreckers finally received its premiere in Leipzig in 1906. Despite all her efforts, it wasn’t until the 21st century that The Wreckers was recognised for its brilliance and began to be performed more often, even taking the prime spot as the opening night for Glyndebourne in 2022, the UK’s oldest annual opera festival.

   Set in a Cornish fishing village, the overture does exactly what the libretto says on the tin. Smyth’s masterful orchestration makes full use of all the sounds of the orchestra (complete with organ!) to take the audience on a cliffside walk along the Cornish coast, breathing in the fresh sea air and gazing at the picturesque greenery before an undercurrent drags you under into a tempestuous swirl of notes and stormy timbres.

   
   

5. Beethoven – Fidelio

   Like so much Beethoven, the overture to his only opera didn’t have a straightforward compositional process. Beethoven agonised over the overture to it, composing three versions (titled Leonore Overtures, after the opera’s heroine). Then, with a name change, the breakthrough happened and we got the ‘Fidelio’ Overture.

   Beethoven’s opera is a story of righteousness, pain, imprisonment and redemption. The overture, in full Beethoven drama, gives us the darkness and light that runs throughout the opera.

6. Bizet – Carmen

   Under the scorching Spanish sun, a charming seductress uses her beguiling looks and voice to lure a naïve soldier from his post and his girlfriend. The fiery protagonist and namesake of the opera, Carmen’s motif is the last of three themes heard in Bizet’s overture.

   The first is an almost circus-like march that announces the entry of the bullfighters to the arena, followed by the main refrain from the ‘Toreador Song’ which is one of the two most popular and easily recognisable themes from the opera, alongside the ‘Habañera’. The overture ends with the Carmen motif, a sultry cello melody over tremolo strings that perfectly encapsulate her electrifying and unnerving presence.

   
   

7. Mozart – Don Giovanni

   Legend has it, Mozart left it right down to the wire to compose the overture to his opera Don Giovanni. On the eve of the premiere, Wolfgang returned to his room after drinking with friends and got straight to work, slaving over his manuscript until the early hours. Thankfully for us, and for Mozart too, the piece that emerged from his alcohol-imbued pen nib that evening is nothing short of a masterpiece, the perfect fit for an opera that includes love, heartbreak, comic relief, a statue that comes to life, and a damnation to hell.

   The overture is the perfect set-up to the ensuing drama, full of sinister strings, tolling timpani beats, and unnervingly rapid changes in dynamic, before a typically triumphant Mozartian fanfare.

8. Wagner – Tannhäuser

   A tale of lust, love and loss, Wagner’s Tannhäuser is a mighty work, chock-full of lush Romantic harmonies, ingenious orchestration, and leitmotifs galore. Not that you’d expect any less from the composer who gave us the Ring cycle.

   The overture opens with the ‘Pilgrim’s Chorus’, a slow and repentant theme played by wind and brass before being picked up by the strings, too. The strings take up a lilting countermelody to the trombones’ fanfare, lapsing into a yearning melody that represents the goddess Venus and her mystical domain.

9. Rossini – The Barber of Seville

   Gioachino Rossini was known for his nifty nib, and managed to write all the music to the entire opera The Barber of Seville in just three weeks. Well, almost. Having left the overture to the last minute, Rossini decided instead to recycle one he’d used for two previous operas. Laziness or resourceful genius? We’ll let you decide.

   Despite not bearing any relation whatsoever to the music in the rest of the opera, the Overture to The Barber of Seville is a brilliant piece of music in its own right. With a catchy main them over a softly chugging bass line, it’s a concert favourite to this day, made famous also by the 1950 Rabbit of Seville sketch by Looney Tunes, featuring Bugs Bunny.

   
   

10. Mozart – The Marriage of Figaro

    Somewhat unsurprisingly, one of the greatest operas ever written also gave us one of the greatest overtures ever written. Mozart’s comic masterpiece tells the story of a rich Count with a wandering eye, who attempts to seduce the Countess’s maid, Susanna, ahead of her wedding day, only to be taught a hard-learned lesson in fidelity by Susanna, in league with the Countess.

    While it doesn’t contain any of the themes of the opera that follows, the Overture to The Marriage of Figaro sets the scene perfectly for the playfully chaotic drama that unfurls throughout. A flurry of string and bassoon quavers are followed by a sighing woodwind motif that quickly leads into a full force fanfare, complete with timpani and brass.