Opera in German
Beethoven followed his example with the idealistic Fidelio; and with Der Freischütz of 1821, Weber established a uniquely German form of opera under the influence of Romanticism.
Wagner strove to achieve his ideal of opera as "music drama", eliminating all distinction between aria and recitative, employing a complex web of leitmotifs and vastly increasing the power and richness of the orchestra.
Opera flourished in German-speaking lands in the early 20th century in the hands of figures such as Hindemith, Busoni and Weill until Adolf Hitler's seizure of power forced many composers into silence or exile.
After World War II young opera writers were inspired by the example of Schoenberg and Berg who had pioneered modernist techniques such as atonality and serialism in the earlier decades of the century.
This is also evidenced by the large number of opera houses, particularly in Germany where almost every major city has its own theatre for staging such works, as well as internationally renowned operatic events such as the Salzburg Festival.
The music to Schütz's Dafne is now lost and details of the performance are sketchy, but it is known to have been written to celebrate the marriage of Landgrave Georg II of Hessen-Darmstadt to Princess Sophia Eleonora of Saxony in Torgau in 1627.
In Nuremberg in 1644, Sigmund Staden produced the "spiritual pastorale", Seelewig, which foreshadows the Singspiel, a genre of German-language opera in which arias alternate with spoken dialogue.
The new opera house opened with a performance of Johann Theile's Der erschaffene, gefallene und aufgerichtete Mensch, based on the story of Adam and Eve.
Initially, the works performed in Hamburg had all been on religious themes in an attempt to ward off criticisms by Pietist church authorities that the theatre was immoral, but Keiser and fellow composers such as Johann Mattheson broadened the range of subject matter to include the historical and the mythological.
This includes Günther von Schwarzburg, a through-composed opera noted then as now for its topic taken from German history, by composer Ignaz Holzbauer and librettist Anton Klein which premiered in 1777.
An increasing amount of operas originally set to Italian and French texts by composers like André Ernest Modeste Grétry were translated and adopted for performance in German.
[15] Alongside those already mentioned above, notable composers of German-language opera from the 1770s and 1780s include Johann André, Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf, Christian Gottlob Neefe, Ignaz Umlauf, and Ernst Wilhelm Wolf.
[16][17][18] The great figure of the early Classical period was Christoph Willibald Gluck but his pioneering reforms were directed at Italian and French opera, not the German repertoire.
The experiment was short-lived and the troupe was dissolved in 1783, yet the previous year it had produced one undoubted success with Die Entführung aus dem Serail by the young Mozart.
[19] Although it appeared in the context of other popular Viennese magic operas (Zauberopern), like Wenzel Müller's Der Fagottist [de], Mozart's proved to be no ordinary Singspiel.
[20][21][22] The greatest German composer of the next generation, Beethoven, seized on The Magic Flute's blend of domestic comedy and high seriousness for his only opera, Fidelio, the story of a devoted wife who saves her husband from political imprisonment.
He turned to German folk songs and folklore for inspiration; Der Freischütz is based on a tale from the Gespensterbuch ("Book of Wraiths") of Apel and Laun concerning a marksman who makes a pact with the Devil.
[26][27][28][25] Weber's most important successor in the field of Romantic opera was Heinrich Marschner, who further explored the Gothic and the supernatural in works such as Der Vampyr (1828) and Hans Heiling (1833).
He fused elements from all three national styles into his conception of grand opera, which had an important influence on the development of German music, including Wagner's early works.
His earliest experiments followed the examples set by Weber (Die Feen) and Meyerbeer (Rienzi), but his most important formative influence was probably the symphonic music of Beethoven.
In his mature dramas, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Der Ring des Nibelungen and Parsifal, Wagner abolished the distinction between aria and recitative in favour of a seamless flow of "endless melody".
He greatly increased the role and power of the orchestra, creating scores with a complex web of leitmotifs; and he was prepared to violate accepted musical conventions, such as tonality, in his quest for greater expressivity.
Yet, though Hänsel is often viewed as the ideal piece for introducing opera to children, it also has extraordinarily sophisticated orchestration and makes great use of leitmotifs, both tell-tale signs of Wagner's influence.
[citation needed] Although in his early years he was more famous for his orchestral tone poems, Salome (1905) and Elektra (1909) quickly established his reputation as Germany's leading opera composer.
Elektra also marked the beginning of Strauss's working relationship with the leading Austrian poet and playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who would provide another five libretti for the composer.
They combined Wagnerian influences, lush orchestration, strange harmonies and dissonances with "decadent" subject matter reflecting the dominance of Expressionism in the arts and the contemporary psychological explorations of Sigmund Freud.
Das Pensionat [de] (1860) by Franz von Suppé is generally regarded as the first important operetta in the German language, but by far the most famous example of the genre is Die Fledermaus (1874) by Johann Strauss.
Paul Hindemith began his operatic career with short, scandalous pieces such as Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen ("Murder, Hope of Women") before turning to Bach, as Busoni had done.
Hindemith was also interested in putting contemporary life on the stage in his operas (a concept called Zeitoper), as was Ernst Krenek whose Jonny spielt auf (1927) has a jazz violinist as its hero.
Bernd Alois Zimmermann looked to the example of Berg's Wozzeck for his only opera Die Soldaten (1965), and Aribert Reimann continued the tradition of expressionism with his Shakespearean Lear (1978).
