Das Liebesverbot
Das Liebesverbot, is an early comic opera in two acts by Richard Wagner, with the libretto written by the composer after Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. Described as a Große komische Oper, it was composed in early 1836.
Restrained sexuality versus eroticism plays an important role in Das Liebesverbot; these themes recur throughout much of Wagner's output, most notably in Tannhäuser, Die Walküre, and Tristan und Isolde. In each opera, the self-abandonment to love brings the lovers into mortal combat with the surrounding social order. In Das Liebesverbot, because it is a comedy, the outcome is a happy one: unrestrained sexuality wins as the carnival of the entire population goes rioting on after curtain-fall.
Das Liebesverbot was Wagner's second opera and his first to be performed, when the budding composer was just 22 years of age. It has many signs of an early work, carrying a style modeled closely on contemporary French and Italian comic opera. It is also referred to as the forgotten comedy, being one of Wagner's only two comic works, the other being the better-known Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
Performance history
Wagner conducted the premiere in 1836 at the Stadttheater Magdeburg. Poorly attended and with a lead singer who forgot the words and had to improvise, it was a resounding flop and its second performance had to be cancelled after a fist fight between the prima donna's husband and the lead tenor broke out backstage before the curtain had even risen; only three people were in the audience. It was never performed again in Wagner's lifetime.The opera was rarely performed over the following hundred years.
On 16 February 1965, in the United Kingdom, the first performance was given at University College, London, in a semi-professional production staged by the UCLU Music Society in the old Gymnasium.
In 1983, in North America, a successful revival was given, conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch.
In 1990, a staged production was mounted in San Francisco by Pocket Opera, led by, and with an English performing translation by, Donald Pippin.
In 1994, Das Liebesverbot was performed at the Wexford Opera Festival, in Ireland.
On 19 July 2008, a fully staged production was premiered, by Glimmerglass Opera, in a production by Nicholas Muni, at the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, New York, USA. The cast was led by Mark Schnaible as Friedrich and Claudia Waite as Isabella; Corrado Rovaris conducted.
In 2009, a concert production was presented at the International Festival of Young Singers at the Kammeroper Schloss Rheinsberg plus a staged production at the Staatstheater Braunschweig in October.
Since 2011, a production of this work has formed part of the repertoire of Helikon Opera Moscow.
In 2013, 200 years after the composer's birth, it was performed in Bayreuth for the first time. A production of the Oper Leipzig was shown in the Oberfrankenhalle, a hall for sports, because Wagner had banned his early operas from the Festspielhaus. It was staged by Aron Stiehl with elements of operetta and revue; Constantin Trinks conducted the Gewandhausorchester.
On 24 September 2015, the opera premiered in Romania at the Cluj-Napoca Hungarian Opera.
In 2016, the opera was staged by the Teatro Real, Madrid.
Roles
Synopsis
The synopsis is Wagner's own description of his scenario, in a translation by William Ashton Ellis published in 1898.Act 1
The town square
An unnamed King of Sicily leaves his country on a journey to Naples, as I suppose, and deputes to his appointed State-holder—called simply Friedrich, to mark him for a German—the full authority to use all royal powers in an attempt to radically reform the manners of his capital, which had become an abomination to the strait-laced minister. At the commencement of the piece we see public officers hard at work on the houses of amusement in a suburb of Palermo, closing some, demolishing others, and taking their hosts and servants into custody. The populace interferes; great riot: after a roll of the drums the chief constable Brighella, standing at bay, reads out the edict of the State-holder according to which these measures have been adopted to secure a better state of morals.General derision, with a mocking chorus; Luzio, a young nobleman and jovial rake, appears to wish to make himself the people's leader; he promptly finds occasion for espousing the cause of the oppressed when he sees his friend Claudio conducted on the road to prison, and learns from him that, in pursuance of an ancient law unearthed by Friedrich, he is about to be condemned to death for an amorous indiscretion. His affianced, whom the hostility of her parents has prevented his marrying, has become a mother by him; the hatred of the relatives allies itself with Friedrich's puritanic zeal: he fears the worst, and has one only hope of rescue, that the pleading of his sister Isabella may succeed in softening the tyrant's heart. Luzio promises to go at once to Isabella in the cloister of the Elisabethans, where she has lately entered her novitiate.
A convent
Within the quiet cloister walls we make the acquaintance of this sister, in confidential converse with her friend Marianne, who also has entered as novice. Marianne discloses to her friend, from whom she has long been parted, the sad fate that has brought her hither. By a man of high position she had been persuaded to a secret union, under the pledge of eternal fidelity; in her hour of utmost need she had found herself abandoned, and even persecuted, for the betrayer proved to be the most powerful personage in all the state, no less a man than the King's present State-holder.Isabella's horror finds vent in a tempest of wrath, only to be allayed by the resolve to leave a world where such monstrosities can go unpunished.—When Luzio brings her tidings of the fate of her own brother, her abhorrence of his misdemeanour passes swiftly to revolt against the baseness of the hypocritical State-holder who dares so cruelly to tax her brother's infinitely lesser fault, at least attainted with no treachery. Her violence unwittingly exhibits her to Luzio in the most seductive light; fired by sudden love, he implores her to leave the nunnery for ever and take his hand. She quickly brings him to his senses, yet decides, without a moment's wavering, to accept his escort to the State-holder in the House of Justice.
A courtroom
Here the trial is about to take place, and I introduce it with a burlesque examination of various moral delinquents by the chief constable Brighella. This gives more prominence to the seriousness of the situation when the gloomy figure of Friedrich appears, commanding silence to the uproarious rabble that has forced the doors; he then begins the hearing of Claudio in strictest form. The relentless judge is upon the point of passing sentence, when Isabella arrives and demands a private audience of the State-holder.She comports herself with noble moderation in this private colloquy with a man she fears and yet despises, commencing with nothing but an appeal to his clemency and mercy. His objections make her more impassioned: she sets her brother's misdemeanour in a touching light, and pleads forgiveness for a fault so human and in nowise past all pardon. As she observes the impression of her warmth, with ever-greater fire she goes on to address the hidden feeling of the judge's heart, which cannot possibly have been quite barred against the sentiments that made her brother stray, and to whose own experience she now appeals for help in her despairing plea for mercy. The ice of that heart is broken: Friedrich, stirred to his depths by Isabella's beauty, no longer feels himself his master; he promises to Isabella whatever she may ask, at price of her own body.
Hardly has she become conscious of this unexpected effect, than, in utmost fury at such incredible villainy, she rushes to door and window and calls the people in, to unmask the hypocrite to all the world. Already the whole crowd is pouring in to the judgment hall, when Friedrich's desperate self-command succeeds in convincing Isabella, by a few well-chosen phrases, of the impossibility of her attempt: he would simply deny her accusation, represent his offer as a means of detection, and certainly find credence if it came to any question of repudiating a charge of wanton insult.
Isabella, ashamed and bewildered, recognises the madness of her thought, and succumbs to mute despair. But while Friedrich is displaying his utmost rigour afresh to the people, and delivering sentence on the prisoner, Isabella suddenly remembers the mournful fate of Marianne; like a lightning flash, she conceives the idea of gaining by stratagem what seems impossible through open force. At once she bounds from deepest sorrow to the height of mirth: to her lamenting brother, his downcast friend, the helpless throng, she turns with promise of the gayest escapade she will prepare for all of them, for the very Carnival which the State-holder had so strenuously forbidden shall be celebrated this time with unwonted spirit, as that dread rigorist had merely donned the garb of harshness the more agreeably to surprise the town by his hearty share in all the sport he had proscribed.
Everyone deems her crazy, and Friedrich chides her most severely for such inexplicable folly: a few words from her suffice to set his own brain reeling; for beneath her breath she promises fulfilment of his fondest wishes, engaging to despatch a messenger with welcome tidings for the following night.
Thus ends the first act, in wildest commotion.
Act 2
A prison
What the heroine's hasty plan may be, we learn at the beginning of the second, where she gains admittance to her brother's jail to prove if he is worth the saving. She reveals to him Friedrich's shameful proposals, and asks him if he craves his forfeit life at this price of his sister's dishonour? Claudio's wrath and readiness to sacrifice himself are followed by a softer mood, when he begins to bid his sister farewell for this life, and commit to her the tenderest greetings for his grieving lover; at last his sorrow causes him to quite break down.Isabella, about to tell him of his rescue, now pauses in dismay; for she sees her brother falling from the height of nobleness to weak avowal of unshaken love of life, to the shamefaced question whether the price of his deliverance be quite beyond her. Aghast, she rises to her feet, thrusts the craven from her, and informs him that he now must add to the shame of death the full weight of her contempt.
As soon as she has returned him to the jailer, her bearing once more passes to ebullient glee: she resolves indeed to chastise the weak-kneed by prolonging his uncertainty about his fate, but still abides by her decision to rid the world of the most disgraceful hypocrite that ever sought to frame its laws.
She has arranged for Marianne to take her place in the rendezvous desired by Friedrich for the night, and now sends him the invitation, which, to involve him in the greater ruin, appoints a masked encounter at one of the places of amusement which he himself has closed.
The madcap Luzio, whom she also means to punish for his impudent proposal to a novice, she tells of Friedrich's passion, and remarks on her feigned decision to yield to the inevitable in such a flippant fashion that she plunges him, at other times so feather-brained, into an agony of despair: he swears that even should the noble maid intend to bear this untold shame, he will ward it off with all his might, though all Palermo leap ablaze.