Franz von Suppe (1819 -1895) Famous Overtures The composer Franz Suppe, the possessor of an imposing string of names and title as Francesco Ezechiele...
Franz von Suppe (1819
-1895)
Famous Overtures
The composer Franz
Suppe, the possessor of an imposing string of names and title as Francesco
Ezechiele Ermenegildo Cavaliere Suppe Demelli, was born in the Dalmatian town
of Spalato (the modern Split) in 1819. His father, a civil servant in the
service of the Austrian Empire like his father before him, was of remoter
Belgian origin, his mother Viennese by birth. Suppe made his career chiefly in
Vienna. As a boy he had no encouragement in music from his father, but was
helped by a local bandmaster and by the Spalato cathedral choirmaster. His Missa
dalmatica dates from this early period. Following his father's wishes, he
studied law in Padua, while pursuing his musical interests privately,
particularly during visits to Milan, where he heard operas by Rossini,
Donizetti and the young Verdi and met the composers. The death of his father in
1835 led to removal with his mother to Vienna, to the home of her parents. Here
he attempted courses at the Polytechnic and in the University School of
Medicine, before deciding on music as a profession. He now took lessons from
Ignaz von Seyfried and Simon Sechter, representatives of an earlier age of
Viennese classicism, paying his way by giving Italian lessons, and in 1840 started
unpaid work as theatre conductor at the Theater in der Josefstadt, then under
Franz Pokornı, who was also associated with theatres in Baden, Ödenburg (now
Sopron) and Pressburg (the modern Bratislava), spending the years from 1842 to
1844 in the last of these. His first stage success came in 1841 with the comedy
with songs Jung lustig, im Alter traurig oder Die Folgen der Erziehung ('Happy
in Youth, Sad in Old Age or The Consequences of Education'). Earlier Italian
operas, Virginia written in 1837 and Gertrude della valle, composed
in 1841 and shown to his visiting distant kinsman Donizetti, remained
unperformed, but from 1844 he was entrusted also with the direction of Italian
operas. These years were busy, allowing him to write a number of scores for the
Josefstadt Theater and the other theatres, to conduct and, in Ödenburg in 1842,
to appear as a singer, taking the part of Dulcamara in Donizetti's L'elisir
d'amore. In 1845 he moved to the Theater an der Wien, Schikaneder's old theatre,
now acquired by Pokornı. Here he remained for the next seventeen years, working
at first with Lortzing and, after 1848, with Adolf Müller. These years saw the
composition of a number of successful theatre pieces, Singspiel, operas and
plays with songs, as well as a Requiem for Franz Pokornı in 1855.
It was in 1860, with his two act operetta Das Pensionat for
Pokornı's son Alois, that Suppe first embarked on the genre of Viennese
operetta at the Theater an der Wien. Two years later, with Alois Pokornı's
bankruptcy, he became conductor at the Kaitheater, later destroyed by fire,
moving then to the Carltheater with the actor-manager Carl Treumann. It was
here, above all, that he established his reputation as a composer of light
opera, from Das Corps der Rache ('The Revenge Corps') in 1864 to Das
Modell, left incomplete at his death in 1895, but staged in the same
theatre six months later in aversion finished by others. He had retired from
the Carltheater in 1882, after the failure of Das Herzblattchen ('The
Sweetheart'), which he blamed on the production. His position in the world of
Viennese operetta had been recognised the previous year by the freedom of the
city. Operetta in Vienna owed much to the influence of the younger Johann
Strauss, but Suppe brought to the task a much longer experience of the theatre
and, it might be suggested, wider musical experience from his early background.
Never entirely losing his Italian accent, he brought to Austrian operetta an
Italian gift of vocal melody, with a sure technical command of the resources of
composition. He may be regarded as the creator of Viennese operetta, although
his invention may have begun to fail in his later years, when a hostile
Viennese critic remarked that his music was not the heady wine of Strauss but a
Dalmatian Suppe (soup).
The operetta Die schone Galatea ('Fair Galatea'), was first
performed at Meysel's in Berlin in June 1865. The libretto by Poly Henrion, the
pen-name of Kohl von Kohlenegg, deals with the subject of Pygmalion, who
created a beautiful statue, Galatea, brought to life by the intercession of
Venus. In the operetta Galatea proves so troublesome, wooed by the rich Mydas
and flirting with Pygmalion's servant Ganymede, that he prays for her to be
turned again to stone. His prayer is answered and the statue is sold to Mydas,
who had first set his heart on acquiring it. The sparkling overture, hinting at
the drama to come, is among the more familiar. The satirical-mythological story
is akin to the popular Offenbach excursions into this territory in Orphee
aux enfers and La belle Helene.
Leichte Kavallerie ('Light Cavalry'), a comic operetta in two acts, with
a text by C. Costa, was first staged at the Carltheater on 21st March 1866. The
overture opens with a fanfare, echoed, before launching into the familiar music
of sparkle and brilliance.
Fatinitza, an operetta in three acts, based on La circasienne of Eugène
Scribe, set by Auber, has a text by Zell and Genee, two of the most
distinguished collaborators in the genre of operetta. Zell was the pseudonym of
Camillo Walzel, who had spent seventeen years as a captain with the Danube
Steamship Company, after a varied earlier career. He was artistic director from
1884 to 1889 at the Theater an der Wien, where Richard Genee was conductor from
1868 to 1878. Zell, Genee and Suppe died within a few weeks of each other in
1895. Set in the Crimean War, it deals with the mistakes that occur when
Lieutenant Wladimir adopts female disguise, captivating the General
Kantschukoff and later finding himself imprisoned in a Turkish harem. It was
first staged at the Carltheater in 1876.
Boccaccio oder Der
Prinz von Palermo, another
Zell and Genee collaboration, is a three-act operetta. The plot of the operetta
concerns the poet Boccaccio and his attempts, in various disguises, to woo the
natural daughter of the Duke of Tuscany, Fiametta, whom, in spite of his
scandalous reputation in Florence, he eventually marries. Boccaccio, one
of Suppe's greatest successes, was staged at the Carltheater in February 1879.
The March is heard in Act III and appears again to bring the whole piece
to a memorable conclusion.
The very dramatic overture to Irrfahrt um's Glück ('Fortune's
Labyrinth') is followed by the well known overture to Ein Morgen, Mittag und
Abend in Wien ('Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna'), used virtually in the
same form for the operetta Der Kramer und sein Commis and designed to
introduce a two-act operetta first staged at the Josefstadt Theatre in February
1844.
Banditenstreiche ('Jolly Robbers'), in 1867, its opening fanfares
heralding a more ominous motif, before a march begins, relaxes into an
initially gentler dance of some mountain hide-away, while Pique-Dame ('Queen
of Spades') was a revised version of the earlier Die Kartenschlagerin, that
proved less successful in its earlier version, staged at the Kaitheater in
1862, to be remounted to a better reaction under its new title in 1865, now at
the Carltheater. It has an overture that starts ominously enough, before the
seemingly inevitable excursion into a lighter mood.
Flotte Burschen, generally and infelicitously translated into English
as Gay Blades, has an alternative German title, Das Bild der
Madame Potifar ('The Picture of Madame Potifar') and was first mounted in
Vienna in April 1863. The plot centres largely on romantic student activities
in Heidelberg and the overture itself includes a number of student songs, the
famous Gaudeamus igitur among them.
The most familiar overture of all, Dichter und Bauer ('Poet and
Peasant'), was published in no less than 37 varied arrangements, from piano
duet to duet for two flutes. The original work was a comedy with songs,
composed in 1846, but the overture was not new, having been used twice before.