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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 August 2008
The pre-history of a nineteenth-century composer's first opera often required labours more arduous and frustrating, more time-consuming by far, than the work of composition itself: the search for a suitable libretto or the source from which a libretto could be fashioned. The chronicle of Beethoven's travails before work on his Schmerzenskind could begin, his rejection of plays and poets both before and after the Bouilly-Sonnleithner text of Fidelio, is not the only instance of its kind. Later composers with operatic ambitions and without a court-sponsored coterie of librettisti had an even harder time. The difficulty of locating a good text was not the only or even the principal reason for Brahms's famous quip, ‘Better to marry than to write opera’, but it was certainly a contributing factor and a stumbling block for others. For those who, unlike Wagner, did not trust their own poetic skills, the doleful refrain, ‘A good poet is hard to find’, was a leitmotif more insistent than anything in the Ring.
1 Anderson, Emily, ‘Beethoven's Operatic Plans’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 83 (1961–1962), 61–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Late in life, Beethoven planned a collaboration with Franz Grillparzer, who actually delivered a libretto entitled Die schöne Melusine.
2 Karl Heckel gives the quotation in Hugo Wolf in seinem Verhältnis zu Richard Wagner (Munich, 1905), 11.Google Scholar
3 Wolf was compared with Schubert from early in his life. When the singer Ferdinand Jäger presented a recital of Wolf's songs in Graz on 12 April 1890, the music critic for Die Tagespost wrote, ‘Hugo Wolf is a Lieder composer of the first rank. Since Schubert we have seen few equal to him.’ Ernst Decsey, Hugo Wolf, III: Der Künstler und die Welt (Leipzig and Berlin, 1904), 12.Google Scholar
4 The only music Wolf ever wrote on commission was some incidental music to Ibsen's Das Fest auf Solhaug for Max Burckhard, director of the Vienna Burgtheater. Wolf at first liked the drama and even considered it as a possible operatic source, but changed his mind quickly. On 11 November 1890 he wrote to Engelbert Humperdinck about his miseries with the Ibsen music: ‘Let the devil compose it. If opportunity makes thieves, one should not take it amiss if I steal the music for this occasional piece from somewhere’ (Decsey, III, 59). Wolf wrote in November of 1890, ‘The Ibsen piece pleases me less every day. It's really bungled, and there's damn little poetry in it.’ Wolf, Hugo, Briefe an Oskar Grohe (Berlin, 1905), 14.Google Scholar The requirement that his opera text be ‘poetic’ in the larger sense of that word was established early in his search.
5 Wolf, Hugo, Briefe an Emil Kauffmann, ed. Hellmer, Edmund (Berlin, 1903), 43–4.Google Scholar
6 Briefe an Kauffmann, 55–6 (12 10 1891).Google Scholar
7 In a letter of 6 August 1891 (Briefe an Kauffmann, 53), Wolf writes: ‘You ask me about the opera. Dear God, I'd be satisfied if I could write the smallest little Lied – and now an opera!’ And yet, in the same letter, Wolf goes on to say that he is currently reading the plays of Aristophanes in the hopes of finding material for a comic opera.
8 Cook, Peter, Hugo Wolf's ‘Corregidor’: A Study of the Opera and its Origins (London, 1976)Google Scholar and Saary, Margarethe, Persönlichkeit and musikdramatische Kreativität Hugo Wolfs (Tutzing, 1984), 357–444.Google Scholar
9 Genoveva, with a libretto adapted from Friedrich Hebbel's 1843 drama, has its defenders. See Siegel, Linda, ‘A Second Look at Schumann's Genoveva’, The Music Review, 36 (1975), 17–41.Google Scholar
10 Hanslick, Eduard, ‘Robert Schumann als Opernkomponist’, Die moderne Oper: Kritiken und Studien (Berlin, 1885), 256–73.Google Scholar
11 Wolf, Hugo, Briefe an Rosa Mayreder, ed. Werner, Heinrich (Vienna, 1921), 92 (7 09 1897).Google Scholar
12 ‘Alfred der Große’ was set to music by Johann Paul Schmidt and first performed in Berlin on 28 November 1830. In Körner's, TheodorBriefwechsel mit den seinen, ed. Weldler-Steinberg, A. (Leipzig, 1910), 199Google Scholar, writes, Körner (11 07 1812)Google Scholar that Prince Lobkowitz had offered a prize for a libretto competition and that he was considering the ‘Lombard Rosamund’ as a subject.
13 The manuscript of the half-sheet fragment is in the collection of the Austrian National Library in Vienna. I am grateful to the curators for their permission to study this and other manuscripts and to the National Endowment for the Humanities for a yearlong grant in 1987–88 to pursue research on Wolf.
14 Walker, Frank, Hugo Wolf, rev. edn (London, 1968), 200.Google Scholar
15 Paul the Deacon, called Warnefried, , History of the Langobards, trans. Foulke, William Dudley (Philadelphia, 1906), 81–5.Google Scholar
16 Friedrich Baron de la Motte-Fouqué, Alboin der Langobardenkönig: Ein Heldenspiel in Sechs Abentheuren (Leipzig, 1813).Google Scholar
17 Hugo Wolf: Eine Persönlichkeit in Briefen. Familienbriefe, ed. Hellmer, Edmund von (Leipzig, 1912), 94.Google Scholar
18 Wolf chose texts from Heine's Buch der Lieder and Neue Gedichte for composition on five separate occasions in the years between 1876 and 1888, those occasions ranging from ambitious plans for two small volumes of Heine songs to a single Lied in isolation.
19 Heine, Heinrich, Reisebilder, erzählende Prosa, Aufsätze, in Werke, ed. Preisendanz, Wolfgang (Frankfurt am Main, 1968), II, 142–3.Google Scholar
20 Specimens of Wolf's comic verse can be found in Hugo Wolf in Maierling: Eine Idylle, mit Briefen, Gedichten, Noten, Bildern und Faksimiles, ed. Werner, Heinrich (Leipzig, 1913).Google Scholar The Schopenhauer reference occurs at the end of a poem (p. 34) that begins ‘–Verse? Reime? / Lassen Sie mal –.’ The ‘merry ballad’ appears on pp. 50–3. In this work, the dying Aunt Bertha goes to Heaven but, realising that she will never again hear Hugo's piano playing, begs to be returned to life.
In Briefe an Grohe (see n. 4), 20 (6 05 1890)Google Scholar, Wolf responds to Grohe's question, ‘Are you also a poet?’, by saying that he only wishes he were, that he has too great a respect for poetry to try it himself. Odysseus, he says, could not long for his homeland more fervently than he [Wolf] longs for a dramatic poet, but who will find one for him? Grohe promptly went to work.
21 Nachtigal, Johann Carl Christoph, ‘Ilse, oder, die Bewohnerin des Ilsensteins’, in Volcks-Sagen, nacherzählt von Otmar (Bremen, 1800), 169–74.Google Scholar
22 Anonymous, , ‘Ein Opernplan Hugo Wolfs’, in Der Merker (Vienna) for 1 03 1913, 175.Google Scholar
23 In ‘Ein Opernplan’, 176, Wolf in the third and final letter marvels at the ephemeral nature of fame and recounts his attempts to find Blumenhagen's source. The Ilse saga, a lengthy inset story told by an unknown stranger at ‘The Red Trout’, appears in Georg, PhilippBlumenhagen, August Wilhelm, Wanderung durch den Harz (Leipzig, n.d.), 26–31Google Scholar, and recounts how the maiden Ilse became the siren water-nixie.
24 ‘Ein Opernplan’, 176–7.Google Scholar
25 Wolf seems not to have known the lengthy verse romance about Henry the Fowler and Ilse entitled Herr Heinrich: Eine deutsche Saga (Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1854)Google Scholar by Roquette, Otto (1824–1896)Google Scholar, whose lyric poem ‘Perlenfischer’ Wolf set to music in May 1876. It is a Tannhäuser-esque version of the legend and was perhaps influenced by the Heine ballad.
26 Briefe an Kauffmann (see n. 5), 128–9.Google Scholar
27 Briefe an Grohe (see n. 4), 26 (6 06 1890).Google Scholar
28 Wolf, Hugo, Briefe an Melanie Köchert, ed. Grasberger, Franz (Tutzing, 1964), 165Google Scholar (28 March 1896). Wolf claimed ‘that humour in music has for the first time entered the world in this song [‘Ich ließ mich sagen’ from the Italienisches Liederbuch]’. He was exaggerating; it is not even the first instance of humour in Wolf's works. He had a penchant for comic songs, beginning with his setting of Mörike's ‘Mausfallen-Sprüchlein’ (1882) and ending with the character of Repela in Der Corregidor and the comic Lieder for women in the Italienisches Liederbuch. Humour that originates in rage, resentment and hostility, such as the arrogant, babbling critic whom Mörike's poetic persona kicks down the stairs at the end of ‘Abschied’, was Wolf's particular forte.
29 Schur, Gustav, Erinnerungen an Hugo Wolf, ed. Werner, Heinrich (Regensburg, 1922), 46–7.Google Scholar
30 At first, Wolf tells Grohe, Briefe (see n. 4), 27Google Scholar, that he might ask Detlev von Liliencron to be librettist. To Schur ( Erinnerungen, 47–8Google Scholar), he speaks of asking Heinrich Rauchberg, a university professor in Prague and an active Wolf enthusiast, to approach Genée for his advice.
31 Liliencron, Detlev von, Gesammelte Werke (Berlin, 1912), IV, 338–418.Google Scholar
32 Briefe an Grohe (see n. 4), 30–1Google Scholar, and Walker, (see n. 14), 268.Google Scholar
33 Briefe an Grohe, 21 (12 05 1890).Google Scholar
34 Briefe an Grohe, 74.Google Scholar See also Ludwig, Otto, Sämtliche Werke, ed. Merker, Paul (Munich, 1922), IV, 276–394.Google Scholar
35 Walker, (see n. 14), 142–3Google Scholar, recounts anecdotes culled from Hermann Bahr's Buch der Jugend of the twenty-three-year-old Wolf raving, cursing and laughing at the works of bad contemporary poets and composers. The sample that Walker cites from Richard Kralik von Meyrswalden is parodistically rhapsodic (‘O Tag! O Sonne! O Morgenrot!/ O Wald! O Quell! O Hain!’); its emotionalism was guaranteed to displease Wolf, who preferred the greater objectivity of Mörike, Goethe and Eichendorff's ‘portrait gallery’ of sailors, scholars and lovers. The Lenau and Heine settings belong to Wolf's youth, before his rejection of Romantic subjectivity.
36 Briefe an Grohe, 74–5.Google Scholar
37 Briefe an Grohe, 34–5.Google Scholar
38 The Music Criticism of Hugo Wolf, trans. and ed. Pleasants, Henry (New York, 1978), 96.Google Scholar In a review published on 21 December 1884, Wolf describes Auber's Les Diamants de la couronne as ‘this delightful, favourite light opera’, with ‘uncommonly amusing, sparkling music adorning a skilfully made, effective libretto by Scribe’.
39 Briefe an Grohe, 101.Google ScholarActéon is included in Oeuvres complètes de Eugène Scribe: Opéras Comiques (Paris, 1878), V, 287–331.Google Scholar
40 Briefe an Grobe, 102 (1 03 1893).Google Scholar On 5 May 1893 ( Briefe an Grohe, 108Google Scholar), Wolf tells his friend that he has abandoned the idea of a Grillparzer opera.
41 Briefe an Kauffmann (see n. 5), 92.Google Scholar I wonder if this is not Lindau's, Wilhelm Adolf translation of Zenobia: or The Fall of Palmyra (1839)Google Scholar by Ware, William (1797–1852)Google Scholar, a popular historical romance in its day.
42 Briefe an Grohe, 80 (9 01 1892).Google Scholar
43 Briefe an Kauffmann, 49.Google Scholar
44 Briefe an Grohe, 95 (22 12 1892).Google Scholar
45 Briefe an Grohe, 116–17 (30 07 1893).Google Scholar
46 Meinhold, Wilhelm, Maria Schweidler die Bernsteinhexe. Die interessanteste aller bisher bekannten Hexenprocesse, nach einer defecten Handschrift ihres Vaters Abraham (Berlin, 1843).Google Scholar
47 Briefe an Grohe, 83.Google Scholar
48 Briefe an Grohe, 122.Google Scholar
49 Briefe an Grohe, 132.Google Scholar
50 ‘Ungedruckte Briefe von Hugo Wolf an Paul Müller’, in Jahrbuch der Musikbibliothek Peters für 1904 (Leipzig, 1905), 86Google Scholar
51 Briefe an Grohe, 252.Google Scholar
52 Wolf evidently knew Arnold Böcklin's favourite subjects: the artist repeatedly painted mythological scenes of nymphs, fauns and Pan, such as the well-known Panisches Schrecken. Walker, (see n. 14), 269Google Scholar, refers to a proposal by Hermann Bahr in 1890 that Wolf, Liliencron and Böcklin collaborate on the creation of a pantomime.
53 Ottorino Respighi's La campana sommersa is based on a libretto by Claudio Guastalla. Guastalla retains more of Hauptmann's sequence of scenes in a four-act framework than Wolf proposed, but he eviscerates individual speeches and dialogues, often keeping only a hint of the mystical-religious-philosophical-psychological elements in the German play.
54 Walker, (see n. 14), 417.Google Scholar
55 Briefe an Melanie Köchert (see n. 28), 147 (28 07 1895).Google Scholar In Briefe an Grohe, 252Google Scholar, Wolf asks for the second volume of the Nietzsche biography; in the letter of 14 February (253), he tells Grohe that Heckel has sent him the biography, but Frau Mayreder borrowed it; he hopes for its return soon. In the letter of 13 May 1897 (263), he tells Grohe of his anger over an article critical of Nietzsche that had appeared in the Neue Freie Presse.
56 Briefe an Köchen (see n. 28), 117–18.Google Scholar
57 Briefe an Grohe (see n. 4), 256Google Scholar, and Walker, (see n. 14), 426–7.Google Scholar
58 The first references to Kleist come from 1880, when Wolf sent his father a parcel of favourite books, including Kleist's Prinz Friedrich von Homburg and Der zerbrochene Krug. The anecdote of Wolf's late-night impromptu dramatic readings in 1884 is cited in Walker, 165.
59 Kleist's play is a free translation and re-working of Molière's Amphitrion. Kleist both broadens the comic elements and alters the principal characters (Jupiter, Alcmena and Amphitryon) so that they are more serious, more profound than in Molière, whose Jupiter is an amusing Olympian roué.
60 In the Briefe an Mayreder (see n. 11), 55 (4 11 1895)Google Scholar, Wolf writes in a postscript: ‘What do you think, my dear, of the title “comic” opera? Wouldn't it be better simply to say opera? The comic element in our Corregidor is not exactly predominant. Do you agree?’
61 Briefe an Grohe, 39–40.Google Scholar
62 Steiner, George, The Death of Tragedy (London, 1961), 133–5.Google Scholar