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Updated: May 9, 2025
He advised him to do what he himself had done to "Fidelio," cut out nearly a third of the score. Weber took this advice, and remade parts of the opera, where he deemed it necessary. The strain of the production of "Euryanthe" told severely on the composer's delicate health, and he returned to Dresden in an exhausted state. There was no rest for him here, as official duties were pressing.
There is no evidence that Beethoven had any such purpose; he merely called in the aid of the human voice to secure variety of sound and expression. Poetry and music had been combined centuries before Beethoven in the opera and in lyric song. No, the roots of Wagner's music-dramas are not to be found in Beethoven, but in Weber. His "Freischütz" and "Euryanthe" are the prototypes of Wagner's operas.
Once when I had been doggedly beating out some easy passages from an old score of Euryanthe I had found among her music books, she came up to me and, putting her hands over my eyes, gently drew my head back upon her shoulder, saying tremulously, "Don't love it so well, Clark, or it may be taken from you. Oh, dear boy, pray that whatever your sacrifice may be, it be not that."
Here I found myself confronted with a problem, the solving of which I was just at that time disposed to take as easily as possible, and displayed my courage by discarding all prejudice, and that daringly, in the short criticism just mentioned in which I simply scoffed at Euryanthe.
Weber's only pupil, Sir Julius Benedict, relates that Weber spent many mornings in "learning by heart the words of 'Euryanthe, which he studied until he made them a portion of himself, his own creation, as it were.
He obtains the ring, confronts Euryanthe with it at the palace, and forces her to admit the broken promise. Adolar, believing that she is guilty, drags her away to a wilderness where it is his intention to kill her; but on the way they are attacked by a serpent. Adolar slays the monster, and then, seized with sudden pity, he abandons his intention of killing her, but leaves her to her fate.
M. Rollinat relates also how in 184-, when Chopin, Liszt, the Comtesse d'Agoult, Pauline Garcia, Eugene Delacroix, the actor Bocage, and other celebrities were at Nohant, the piano was one moonlit night carried out to the terrace; how Liszt played the hunting chorus from Weber's Euryanthe, Chopin some bars from an impromptu he was then composing; how Pauline Garcia sang Nel cor piu non mi sento, and a niece of George Sand a popular air; how the echo answered the musicians; and how after the music the company, which included also a number of friends from the neighbouring town, had punch and remained together till dawn.
It was his favorite work; he wrote to his beloved wife two hours before the first performance: "I rely on God and my 'Euryanthe." The opera was produced at the Kärnthnertor Theater, in Vienna, on October 25, 1823. The composer, though weak and ill, made the long journey to the great city, that he might personally introduce his favorite to the Viennese.
The title rôle was taken by Henrietta Sontag, a young girl, still in her teens, though giving high promise of the great things she achieved a few years later. Strange to say, a short time after its first appearance, "Euryanthe" failed to draw.
The first great work of his life, "Der Freischütz," was written at this period. Three other important operas followed, "Preciosa," "Euryanthe," the first performance of which took place in Vienna in 1823, and "Oberon," which he finished in London and brought out there.
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