Hoffmann, E.T.A.

Hoffmann, E.T.A. – Undine

Magic opera in three acts (1813-16)
on a libretto by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué

Preface

In a famous passage from his Grundlagen der Musikgeschichte (1977), the great German musicologist Carl Dahlhaus takes Hoffmann’s Undine as an example to illustrate the manner in which narrative historians construct music history:

“Suppose, for instance, that in a history of nineteenth-century music we were to mention the destruction of the décor for E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Undine during the burning of the old Berlin Schauspielhaus in 1817 and to follow this fact immediately and without further comment by referring to the use four years later of Weber’s Freischütz to inaugurate the new Schauspielhaus. This would suggest a music-historical connection as represented by the destruction and rebuilding of the theatre. And in fact the influence of Undine did come to an abrupt end with this catastrophe, and the opera figures in the history of German romantic opera as a ‘preliminary stage’ en route to Der Freischütz, as a tentative experiment whose aesthetic and historical significance was ‘sublated’ (as the Hegelians would say) into the later and more perfect work. […] The extrinsic correspondence between these two events lends itself to a narrative music history because it allegorises an intrinsic one.”1

Allegorical or not, this hypothetical narrative construct neatly encapsulates the fate of Hoffmann’s musical magnum opus: his four-act “magic opera” Undine.

E. T. A. Hoffmann, a universally gifted writer, musician, composer, critic, illustrator, and, as it happened, high court magistrate, had a great deal of theatrical experience to his credit before he finally found his true calling in the tales that have made his name supreme in the history of the literary imagination. He had served as musical director of the Bamberg Theater (1808) and Seconda’s Touring Company (1813-14) and had himself composed at least eleven operas, including a setting of Scherz, List und Rache after Goethe (1801) and an unperformed “grand romantic opera” Aurora whose première had to wait until 1990. But it was only after encountering Undine, the quintessential romantic fairy-tale by his friend Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué (1777-1843), that he found an opera subject truly in line with his artistic standards and preoccupations. Fouqué’s novella, based on a medieval tale of 1320 by Egenolf von Stauffenberg, appeared in print in 1811, and Hoffmann read it the following year, after which he immediately pressed his friend to turn the thrilling story into a libretto. Fouqué obliged, and by November 1813 the libretto was ready, though Hoffmann, with a sure instinct for dramatic rectitude, radically altered the ending. (In Fouqué’s original, Huldbrand is saved by the sign of the True Cross; in Hoffmann’s opera he perishes in Kühleborn’s subaquean vaults.)

Between February and August 1814 Hoffmann set the text to music at a feverish pace, employing all the skill at his command and all his experience with modern operatic styles (Gluck and Mozart predominate, but Spontini and Simone Mayr were not ignored). Ample use was made of reminiscence motifs for the major characters Kühleborn and Heilmann and for the work’s human relationships; the three worlds of the simple fisherfolk, the court society, and the spirit world were sharply delineated in the music; and while waiting for the première he spent two years adding a great many finishing touches to the orchestration and part-writing. In short, the new work was obviously meant to be his best effort and to stake a claim as a new species of German opera.

When the première finally took place in Berlin’s prestigious Royal Schauspielhaus on 3 August 1816 (the king’s birthday), with Hoffmann himself conducting, it was rousingly received by critics and audience alike. No small part of the success was assured by the remarkable stage décor, designed by the great Prussian architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841) and frequently reproduced in histories of opera production. Another part of the success was contributed by the creator of Undine, the eighteen-year-old soprano Johanna Eunicke (1798-1856), who had caused a sensation in Berlin with her Mozart readings and was now the talk of the town. But still greater was the impact on the critics, who saw in Undine a fresh and quintessentially German type of opera emerging full-blown from the ashes of the Napoleonic Wars. Perhaps the most euphoric review was written by none other than Carl Maria von Weber, who took the opportunity to present what was tantamount to a long manifesto for German romantic opera. In Undine, he wrote, we find “the type of opera Germans want: a self- contained work of art in which all the elements and components from the sister arts disappear in a perfect blend and, thus submerged, form a new world.”2 Four decades later this same idea would resurface in the Wagnerian ….

Read preface / Vorwort > HERE