The German operatic tradition beyond Wagner

[Derek Hughes]

I wonder if one might also count Anton Rubinstein's Die Maccabäer, premièred in Berlin in 1875, with libretto by the ubiquitous Salomon Hermann Mosenthal, who also wrote the libretti for Die Folkunger and Die Königin von Saba (and Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor). Concerning this opera, Tchaikovsky wrote to his brother Modest: 'Tell Anton Rubinstein "My brother has instructed me to tell you that you are a son of a bitch, and you can go and stuff your mother"'.

In her diary, Cosima Wagner wrote: 'the elegant world of Berlin was cheering Anton Rubinstein's opera Die Maccabäer' and 'a curious impression of this opera—it definitely seems that one can nowadays only make an effect if one writes in the Wagnerian style'. (According to Wikipedia, by contrast, Hanslick saw in Die Maccabäer an alternative to the Wagnerian style).

A few weeks later, Wagner ' takes up La Juive, pleasure in the great style of this work—a quite different use of Jewish sounds from that in present day Jewish operas (Die Maccabäer, Die Königin von Saba)'.

Incidentally, these exchanges, and Wagner's other, more positive, reactions to Die Königin von Saba, show that his attitude to Jewish composers could at times be quite nuanced. And, although he obviously had very mixed feelings about Die Maccabäer, he praises Rubinstein's songs in Mein Leben. Mosenthal called on the Wagners in Vienna in March 1875, though after a performance of Die Königin von Saba Cosima's reaction was cruder than Wagner's: 'no gold, no marks, but plenty of Mosenthal'.

Does anyone know Die Maccabäer?

[Alan Howe]

Does anyone know Die Maccabäer?

That's intriguing - especially as I tend to locate Rubinstein in the broad German tradition as much as in the Russian...

[JimL]

It would be great if it (or any of Rubinstein's operas besides Dmitry Donskoy) has an overture that could be used in the concert hall.  Sometimes such curtain raisers in the concert hall eventually pique interest in the work itself.

[eschiss1]

Donskoy doesn't "have" an overture, anyway, anymore- as the rest of its material is lost or destroyed, it is its overture...

(When we talked about this in March, I could only find that his Christus and Néron had extended, though not really exactly separate/played-separately, preludes, I think.)

[JimL]

Well, if they take an extended period of time, and come to discrete cadences before the curtain rises, you could probably use them as concert overtures.