Schwetzingen - Schlösser-Magazin

The Two-Season Structure: Winter and
summer
When the second court theatre opened at
Schwetzingen in summer 1753, the annual
pattern of musical life at the court was
radically restructured 9 . Up until this point,
it had been the custom to launch the theatre
season with a new opera to mark the birthday
of the Elector’s wife on 17 January. With a
second opera house available, musical life
started to be divided into two seasons: winter
in Mannheim from November to early May,
and summer in Schwetzingen from early May
until the end of October.
The Winter Season in Mannheim
The winter season bore all the traces of
splendour and magnificence that the court
liked to demonstrate in public. The supreme
highlight was a new, grandiose opera which,
until 1752, would remain the only opera of
the winter season. Visitors attending the
lavish name day celebrations for the Elector
and Electress described above would arrive in
Mannheim towards the end of October and
usually remain until the end of the Carnival
period, and this enabled them to obtain seats
for the opera as early as possible. The upper
circle of the opera house in the western wing
of Mannheim Palace was open to members of
the public 10 . The festive opera was famous for
its exceedingly sumptuous sets and costumes:
as the libretti show, there were at least eight
backdrops, and after each Act there would be
a ballet with its own independent plot, its own
printed programme, „specially composed music
and separate stage sets. These stately spectacles
would involve more than a hundred performers.
9 This conclusion is based above all both on the surviving libretti,
which state on the title page what occasion to be marked
by the festive opera, and on the envoys’’ reports, which are the
most reliable source of dates and operatic performances in
Schwetzingen; apart from the Riaucour file, the envoys’ reports
by ministers of the Palatinate are relevant to the years 1748 to
1778 (München, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Gesandtschaft
Berlin 136-156, Gesandtschaft Wien 649-706, Gesandtschaft
London 235-249). For a list of productions, cf.: Bärbel Pelker:
Theateraufführungen und musikalische Akademien, in: Die
Mannheimer Hofkapelle im Zeitalter Carl Theodors, pp.
219-259.
10 Description of a performance in the Fourier Diary, which was
lost after the Second World War, in: Walter: Geschichte des
Theaters und der Musik am Kurpfälzischen Hofe, pp. 103-104.
II. Schwetzingen – Elector Carl Theodor’s Summer Residence
The turbulent history of the Palatine court
opera began with the première of the first
festive opera Meride by Carlo Grua on 18
January 1742. Under Carl Theodor’s rule, the
town of his residence became an operatic
hub of European calibre. As at almost every
other princely court (e.g. Berlin, Dresden,
Vienna, Madrid, Naples, Lisbon, Copenhagen),
Italian opera was admittedly based principally
on Metastasian libretti – at least to begin
with, in the 1750s – with works by Johann
Adolf Hasse (Demofoonte), Niccolò Jommelli
(Artaserse, L‘Ifigenia [in Aulide], Il Demetrio),
Baldassare Galuppi (Antigona, L‘Olimpiade)
and Ignaz Holzbauer (La clemenza di
Tito, Nitteti, Ippolito ed Aricia). However,
a renewal was also taking place there,
encouraged notably by Holzbauer, and there
were attempts to implement the reforms
suggested by Francesco Algarotti, whereby all
the elements in an opera should relate to the
dramatic narrative. By the time the reformed
opera “Sofonisba” by Tommaso Trajetta was
first performed in 1762, Mannheim had
asserted its significant role in the symphony
of European court opera.
The wave of reform was consolidated by
first performances of other works, such as
“L’Ifigenia in Tauride” (1764) and “Alessandro
nell’Indie” (1766) by Gian Francesco de Majo
and “Temistocle” (1772) by Johann Christian
Bach. The decisive turning-point in the
courtly repertoire came in 1775, when an
opera written in German, Anton Schweiter’s
“Alceste”, was sung in Schwetzingen. With this
first full-scale opera in a courtly setting, Carl
Theodor was testifying unmistakably to his
preference for the German language.
With the first performance on 5 January
1777 of Günther von Schwarzburg by
Ignaz Holzbauer, resoundingly cheered by
contemporaries as Germany’s first national
opera, the Palatine court – briefly, at least –
sealed its reputation as a home of operatic
reform.
II.
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