Philemon und Baucis, singspiel, H. 29a/1,1a; H. 29b/2 (mostly lost)
Among the musical venues at the palace of Haydn's employer, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, was a marionette theater. Haydn composed several little operas for this venture so alien to the 19th century's way of thinking about music, and sure enough, most have been lost. The present work, Philemon und Baucis (1773), survives in the most complete form, but still took a good deal of editing of text and music to bring it to a performable state. The text restoration by Hermann Beil, done in conjunction with the 200th anniversary of ...
Read More
Among the musical venues at the palace of Haydn's employer, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, was a marionette theater. Haydn composed several little operas for this venture so alien to the 19th century's way of thinking about music, and sure enough, most have been lost. The present work, Philemon und Baucis (1773), survives in the most complete form, but still took a good deal of editing of text and music to bring it to a performable state. The text restoration by Hermann Beil, done in conjunction with the 200th anniversary of Haydn's death in 2009, is admirably effective and brings this very rare Haydn work alive. The piece is like a singspiel, with spoken dialogue (some of it trimmed by Beil to restore continuity destroyed by missing music) framing sung arias by six marionette characters taken from an episode in the "Metamorphoses" by Roman poet Ovid. You might be expecting satirical comedy from a marionette show, but the doggerel-like libretto offers something different, reworking the Roman material into...
Read Less
Portions of content provided by Rovi Corporation. © 2024 Rovi Corporation.