Name That Opera

The artistic depiction of the female body
hasn't changed much since ancient times.
It's all about arranging arms and torso
for the most graceful and curvaceous effect.
Of course the woman's costume is important too,
or in this case the near absence of one.

This young lady wears a kind of light color bathing suit
that today would be considered very modest attire,
but a century ago such a revealing garment
was regarded as shocking to some
or very risque by others.
Nudge, nudge. Know what I mean?

It's an outfit only a theatrical or circus entertainer
might wear,
which in fact was her occupation.
Her name was
Fionetta Adler
Sensationeller Luftakt
~
Sensational aerial act

The studio photo used on this postcard doesn't provide many clues as to just what Fionetta Adler performed in her Luftakt routine. It may have involved swinging on a trapeze, or balancing on a tight rope, or maybe being shot from a cannon. All we can know is that it was sensational to see.

Lately I have been adding more photos of music hall acts to my collection, but Fionetta's coy undergarment pose is not something I'd be inclined to acquire. However when I saw the writing on the back of her card, I had to buy it. 

1. Albert   Tiefland

2. Blech   Alpenkg. + Mensc

3. Flotow   Martha

4. Gluck   Orpheus

5. Goldmark Wintermärche

6. Gounod   Margarete

7. Herold   Zumpa

8. Kretschmer   Folkunger

9. Lortzing  Zer + Zimmerman

10. Mascagni   Canalleria Rus.

11. Méhul   Joseph i Égyptein

12. Mozart   Don Juan

13. Nicolai   Lustigen Weiber

14. Puccini   Madame Butterfly

15. Sibelius(?)   Pfeiferterg(?)

* * *

Written in a heavy cursive hand with a coarse blue pencil is a list in alphabetic order of 15 composers with the title of one of their operas. By itself a list or operas is not particularly unusual, but it's a very odd musical thing to put on the back of a postcard of a circus aerialist. There is no postmark or other identification, but there is still a lot to learn from the list if you like opera trivia. I've added numbers to help follow the account, if readers wish to try the puzzle before reading the answers.

 * * *

1. The first name refers to Eugen d'Albert (1864 – 1932) a Scottish-born German pianist and composer who in his youth studied piano first in Glasgow and then in London. In 1881 he won the Mendelssohn Scholarship to study in Vienna where he met both Brahms and Liszt. Initially he made a successful career as a concert pianist, but later devoted more time to composing. Between 1893 and his death in 1932 d'Albert produced 21 operas. His seventh opera was called Tiefland (The Lowlands) set in the Catalonia region of Spain, and first performed in 1903 in Prague, and then in 1907 in Hamburg and Berlin. It's considered his most successful work and is still occasionally programed.  His personal life bears a mention too, as d'Albert was married six times. In 1932 at the time of his death, he was in Riga, Latvia seeking his sixth divorce, presumably to marry a seventh wife.
   
2. The second name is more obscure, Leo Blech (1871 – 1958) who was a German composer and conductor, principally at the Berlin State Opera house. He composed seven operas, and the fifth one was entitled Alpenkönig und Menschenfeind (Alpine King and Misanthrope) which had its premier at Dresden's Opera House in 1903.  Blech was Jewish and in the 1930s he was forced to leave Berlin for Riga, Latvia because of Hitler's antisemitic laws. Yet his international reputation as a conductor gave him just enough protection so that in 1941 Hermann Göring ordered a special exit visa for Blech that allowed him to escape to Sweden. He lived there until 1949 conducting the Stockholm Royal Opera.
3. The third name is Friedrich von Flotow (1812 – 1883) another very prolific German opera composer. Flotow studied in Paris and wrote 32 operas between 1835 and 1876. His 16th was Martha, oder Der Markt zu Richmond (Martha, or The Market at Richmond) which had its premier in 1847 in Vienna. The story is curiously set in Richmond, England, but some of the music was used for an 1844 Paris ballet entitled Harriette, ou la servante de Greenwiche. Martha is considered his best work and is still programed.
4. The fourth name is Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–1787) who is usually labelled an Austrian or German composer although he was born in Bohemia and likely raised as a Czech. Even so, most of his 49 operas are sung in Italian and French. Orfeo ed Euridice based on the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus was first performed in Italian in 1762 in Vienna, and later in 1774 it was reworked in French for the Paris opera. 
5. Karl Goldmark (1830 – 1915) was a Hungarian-born Viennese composer who was also Jewish. He wrote seven operas and Ein Wintermärchen, adapted from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, was his last opera and first performed in 1908. 
6. Charles-François Gounod (1818 – 1893) was a French composer who wrote 13 operas between 1851 and 1881. His well known opera Faust which premiered in Paris in 1859 using a libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré which is based on Carré's play Faust et Marguerite, which loosely follows Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's tragedy Faust, Part One. In an old German opera house tradition, the opera is called Margarethe to distinguish it from another opera called Faust by Louis Spohr.
7. Ferdinand Hérold (1791 – 1833) was a French composer who wrote 22 operas. His opera Zampa was written for a production in Paris in 1831. It was his most successful work and by 1877 it had been performed 500 times around Europe. However over the next century Zampa lost popularity until today it is only the overture that is ever programmed.  
8. Edmund Kretschmer (1830-1908) was a German musician and composer who was Hoforganist (Court Organist) of the Dresden Cathedral.   Die Folkunger was his first opera of four that he wrote and his first published work. It was premiered in 1874 at the Dresden Hofoper. 
9. Albert Lortzing (1801 – 1851) was a German composer, actor, and singer from Berlin.  Zar und Zimmermann (Tsar and Carpenter) was Lortzing's first comic opera and it premiered in Leipzig in 1837 but did not have real critical success until it was staged in Berlin in 1839. In the first production Lortzing, a tenor,  sang the role of a ship carpenter named Peter, while a baritone handled the role of Tsar Peter the Great. The opera remains in the standard repertoire of German opera houses.
10. Pietro Mascagni (1863 – 1945) was an Italian opera composer and conductor who wrote 15 operas and one operetta. Cavalleria rusticana was his first opera and has only one act. It was written in less than two months in 1890 for a music competition and first performed  in Rome to great acclaim. It is Mascagni's most successful opera, (often paired with Ruggero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci) and by the time of Mascagni's death in 1945 had been performed over 14,000 times in Italy alone .
11. Étienne Méhul (1763 – 1817) was a French composer celebrated for his many operas written during the French Revolution and supposedly for being the first "Romantic" composer. He composed 32 operas and  Joseph, also called Joseph en Égypte, written in 1807, was number 27. Based on the Biblical story of how Joseph the Israelite, favorite son of Jacob, was sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers, the opera has no female roles, though one part is usually sung by a soprano.
    
12. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791) is easily the most recognizable name on this list. Mozart wrote 22 operas, and Don Giovanni, based on the legend of Don Juan, is one of his three finest operas which always place in the list of top 10 popular operas. It premiered in 1787 in Prague.
13. Otto Nicolai (1810 – 1849) was a German composer, conductor, and one of the founders of the Vienna Philharmonic. He also wrote some very fine duets for my instrument, the horn. Nicolai wrote 8 operas and his last one, written in 1849, is his most famous and is still frequently performed. Its German title is Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (The Merry Wives of Windsor) based on the play of Shakespeare. Unlike his other operas which are in Italian, this opera has spoken dialogue in German. Tragically, Nicolai died of a stroke just two months after Die lustigen Weiber opened and only two days after his appointment to Hofkapellmeister at the Berlin Staatsoper,
14. Giacomo Puccini (1858 – 1924) is arguably the most famous Italian opera composer of any century with three operas in the top ten list. His Madama Butterfly premiered in Milan at La Scala in 1904, and its beautiful music and tragic story make it one of the most influential operas ever written.
15. Max von Schillings (1868 – 1933) was a German conductor, composer and theatre director. He was chief conductor at the Berlin State Opera from 1919 to 1925. He wrote four operas and Der Pfeifertag (The Piper's Day) is his second opera written in 1896-99. After WW1 he opposed the Wiemar Republic and became an antisemitic supporter of the Nazi party, using his position on the  Prussian Academy of the Arts to expel and exclude Jewish artists, writers, and musicians.

This was a challenging puzzle for me, both because of the German handwriting style, and because I did not recognize some of the composer's names or the opera titles. Blech, Kretschmer, Méhul, and Schillings were four composers I knew nothing about, but whose biographies were fascinating to read. Of the 15 operas listed on the postcard, I've only played four, and that's not counting the Overture to Zampa overture which I have played but which is not the same as the full opera. I'm impressed with this anonymous writer's list because its diversity show they had a passion for musical drama which a century ago could only come from attending live performances.


Of all the operas on the list, the 1908 premier of Goldmark's Ein Wintermärchen has the most recent date, so Fionetta Adler's postcard was not printed any earlier than that year. Its yellow card paper and dull sepia ink are characteristic of postcards produced during the war years of 1914 to 1918, so I think this list was made during the Great War. It's intriguing to think some German soldier used a free moment to remember a list of operas he had seen. I say soldier because the scrawl looks too masculine to be a woman's handwriting. On the other hand maybe Fionetta, because of all that trapeze work, clutched her pencils with a really strong grip and enjoyed spending a night at the opera when she wasn't up in the air working. 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
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