NOTES ON THE PROGRAM
By James M. Keller, Program Annotator
The Leni and Peter May Chair
Overture to Genoveva, Op. 81
Robert Schumann
L
ike Beethoven before him, Robert Schumann was often stimulated by intentions to
write an opera but only once managed to fulfill
that goal. In his case the opera was Genoveva,
which met with very moderate success in its
time and has never found a place in the mainstream repertoire, notwithstanding the excitement generated by its occasional revivals.
Near the end of March 1847, the Schumanns
(Robert; his wife, Clara, the eminent pianist;
and their two oldest children) returned to their
home in Dresden from a concert tour. In his onthe-road diary entry for March 15, Robert expressed his “desire to write operas — plans.” He
wasted no time acting on this impulse, and
within a week of arriving home in Dresden he
settled on Friedrich Hebbel’s play Genoveva as
the subject matter. The drama centers on a medieval tale. Siegfried, the Count Palatine, departs on a crusade, leaving his new wife,
Genevieve of Brabant, under the care of his
knight Golo. The knight tries to seduce
Genevieve, who resists, and he then spreads
word that it was she who tried to seduce him.
Siegfried, learning of Genevieve’s presumed infidelity, sentences her to death. Complications
ensue, abetted by sorcery, a ghost, and a magic
mirror. A mute child providentially saves
Genevieve from execution just in time for
Siegfried to return and reunite with his wife,
their happiness extolled by all the citizenry.
Schumann began at the beginning, by sketching the Overture in the course of just three days
in early April, even before he drew up the opera’s
scenario. It is the only section of Genoveva that
would be embraced in posterity. The critic Eduard Hanslick wrote, “The best part of the opera
is that which has nothing to do with the stage at
all, namely the Overture.” In a sense he was
right that it was largely unconnected to the
opera. Whereas opera composers at the time
would be more likely to write their overtures last,
perhaps incorporating material from the ensuing action, Schumann wrote his before any other
music had taken shape. A few of its phrases are
revisited later in the opera, but on the whole it
seems more occupied with foreshadowing a
mood rather than any specific episodes. In fact,
it led a life apart from the beginning, since by
the time the opera was premiered, on June 25,
1850 (in Leipzig), the Overture had already
IN SHORT
Born: June 8, 1810, in Zwickau, Saxony
(Germany)
Died: July 29, 1856, in Endenich, near Bonn,
Germany
Work composed: sketched in April 1847,
orchestrated at the end of the year, from
December 17–26
World premiere: June 25, 1850, in Leipzig,
with the composer leading the Gewandhaus
Orchestra
New York Philharmonic premiere: March 16,
1861, Carl Bergmann, conductor
Most recent New York Philharmonic
performance: May 8, 2003, Kurt Masur, conductor
Estimated duration: ca. 8 minutes
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received stand-alone concert performances in
both Leipzig and Hamburg.
If it were somewhat elongated, the Overture
could stand as the first movement of a Schumann symphony; it resembles the composer’s
characteristic symphonic sound in the denseness
of its orchestration, which includes a good deal
of doubled woodwind lines. The opening measure yields a harmonic shocker: a dominant seventh chord surmounted by a minor ninth (a
dominant minor-ninth chord, we might say),
which, though marked pianissimo, emphasizes
the dissonant minor–ninth interval through a
sforzando in the violins. The resolution that
sonority demands arrives in the fourth measure,
placed firmly in C minor. On the largest scale,
the concern of the Overture is to move from the
troubled darkness of C minor to the triumphant
brilliance of C major — a trajectory that would
encapsulate a certain musical holiness to Schumann’s contemporaries as it echoes what
Beethoven had done in his inescapable Fifth
Symphony.
The brooding opening transitions into a fast
section that picks up steam over several measures before galloping off with full force. From
that point on the piece unrolls as a sonata-form
movement, with the second theme being a
hearty ultra-Romantic call from the horn section. A surprise comes when Schumann recalls
material from the introduction, which listeners
will have assumed they had heard the last of
once the fast section got underway. By the time
it ends, the Overture has worked itself into a
frenzy, and the minor ninths have become
major ninths, suggesting an ecstatic outpouring in the place of the menacing gloom that had
flavored the opening.
Instrumentation: two flutes, two oboes, two
clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings.
Sources and Inspirations
It is no surprise that Robert Schumann felt inspired to try his hand
at opera, the domain in which literary and musical pursuits coalesce
on the largest scale. He was born into a thoroughly literary world,
his father being a bookseller and lexicographer who founded a publishing house, penned novels about chivalric romance, and produced
successful translations of Scott, Byron, and Shakespeare.
Already at the age of 20, he was fired up by the idea of composing an operatic version of Hamlet. This never came to fruition, and
neither did dozens of other subjects that waft through his diaries and
correspondence as possibilities during ensuing years. A common
thread that winds through this list of 50-odd non-starters is that
nearly all of them involve texts of acknowledged literary status, including the Nibelungenlied, the tales of Till Eulenspiegel, the love
stories of Tristan and Isolde and of Abélard and Héloïse, the legends
of King Arthur, Homer’s Odyssey, Shakespeare’s The Tempest and
Romeo and Juliet, Schiller’s Mary Stuart, Byron’s The Corsair, and
Goethe’s Faust (which did take form as the dramatic oratorio Scenen
aus Göthe’s Faust).
Genoveva in the Forest Seclusion by Adrian Ludwig Richter, ca. 1840,
a depiction of the medieval tale that inspired Schumann’s opera
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