William Tell (opera)

William Tell
Opera by Gioachino Rossini
Lithograph of the composer by Charlet Ory, 1829
Librettist	Étienne de Jouy Hippolyte Bis
Language	French
Based on	Wilhelm Tell by Friedrich Schiller
Premiere	3 August 1829 Salle Le Peletier, Paris

William Tell (French: Guillaume Tell, Italian: Guglielmo Tell) is a French-language opera in four acts by Italian composer Gioachino Rossini to a libretto by Victor-Joseph Étienne de Jouy and L. F. Bis, based on Friedrich Schiller's play William Tell, which, in turn, drew on the William Tell legend. The opera was Rossini's last, although he lived for nearly 40 more years. Fabio Luisi said that Rossini planned for William Tell to be his last opera even as he composed it.^[1] The often-performed overture in four sections features a depiction of a storm and a vivacious finale, the "March of the Swiss Soldiers."

Paris Opéra archivist Charles Malherbe discovered the original orchestral score of the opera at a secondhand book seller's shop, resulting in its being acquired by the Paris Conservatoire.

Costume designs by Eugène Du Faget for the original production: Laure Cinti-Damoreau as Mathilde, Adolphe Nourrit as Arnold Melchtal, and Nicolas Levasseur as Walter Furst

It was first performed by the Paris Opéra at the Salle Le Peletier on 3 August 1829, but within three performances cuts were being made and after a year only three acts were performed.^[3] The opera's length, roughly four hours of music, and casting requirements, such as the high range required for the tenor part, have contributed to the difficulty of producing the work.^[4] When performed, the opera is often cut. Performances have been given in both French and Italian. Political concerns have also contributed to the varying fortunes of the work.

In Italy, because the work glorified a revolutionary figure against authority, the opera encountered difficulties with the Italian censors, and the number of productions in Italy was limited. The Teatro San Carlo produced the opera in 1833, but then did not give another production for around 50 years. The first Venice production, at the Teatro La Fenice, was not until 1856. By contrast, in Vienna, in spite of censorship problems there, the Vienna Court Opera gave 422 performances over the years 1830–1907.^[5] As Hofer, or the Tell of the Tyrol, the opera was first performed at Drury Lane in London on 1 May 1830 (in English), with a production in Italian following in 1839 at Her Majesty's, and in French at Covent Garden in 1845.^[6] In New York, William Tell was first presented on 19 September 1831.^[7] It was revived at the Metropolitan Opera in 1923 with Ponselle and Martinelli, and there were revivals during the 1930s in Milan, Rome, Paris, Berlin and Florence.^[6] When the opera was performed at Gran Teatre del Liceu (Barcelona) in 1893, an anarchist threw two Orsini bombs in the theatre.^[8]

In the later 20th century there were major productions in Florence (1972), Geneva (1979, 1991), La Scala (1988), Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (1989), Covent Garden (1990), and then Opéra Bastille (2003)^[3] as well as at the Sportspalace in Pesaro (lasting over 5 hours, 1995). In 2010 there was an important revival of the opera, when it opened the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia's season, under Antonio Pappano.^[9] This performance was of the French version, with some cuts to particularly the fourth act (which Pappano noted had been approved by Rossini himself).^[10] A live recording of this concert performance was released in 2011, and the production was transferred to The Proms in July of that year, with Michele Pertusi [fr] taking on the title role, Patricia Bardon^[11] as Hedwige, Nicolas Courjal as Gessler, and Mark Stone as Leuthold. The performance was very well reviewed, and marked the first full performance of the work in the history of the Proms.^[12]

A co-production by the Dutch National Opera and the Metropolitan Opera New York of the opera in the original French opened at the Met in October 2016 with Gerald Finley in the title role.^[13][14]

According to an anecdote, when an admirer told the composer that he had heard his opera the previous night, Rossini replied "What? The whole of it?".^[6] Another version of the story refers only to Act II.^[3] In 1864 Offenbach quoted the patriotic trio from Act 2, "Lorsque la Grèce est un champ de carnage" in La Belle Hélène.^[3]

Overture[

The famous overture to the opera is often heard independently of the complete work.^[15] Its high-energy finale, "March Of The Swiss Soldiers," is particularly familiar through its use in the American radio and television shows of The Lone Ranger. Several portions of the overture were used prominently in the films A Clockwork Orange and The Eagle Shooting Heroes; in addition, Dmitri Shostakovich quotes the main theme of the finale in the first movement of his 15th symphony. The overture has four parts, each linked to the next:

• The Prelude (Dawn) is written only for the cello section (including parts for five soloists), the double basses, and the timpani, in a slow tempo and in E major.
• The Storm is a dynamic section played by the full orchestra, with backup from the trombones, in E minor.
• The Ranz des Vaches, or call to the dairy cows, features the cor anglais (English horn) and the flute. It is in G major.
• The Finale (March Of The Swiss Soldiers) is an ultra-dynamic "cavalry charge" galop heralded by horns and trumpets, and is played by the full orchestra in E major.

• William Tell (German: Wilhelm Tell; French: Guillaume Tell; Italian: Guglielmo Tell; Romansh: Guglielm Tell) is a folk hero of Switzerland. According to the legend, Tell was an expert marksman with the crossbow who assassinated Albrecht Gessler, a tyrannical reeve of the Austrian dukes of the House of Habsburg positioned in Altdorf, in the canton of Uri. Tell's defiance and tyrannicide encouraged the population to open rebellion and a pact against the foreign rulers with neighbouring Schwyz and Unterwalden, marking the foundation of the Swiss Confederacy.

  Set in the early 14th century (traditional date 1307, during the rule of Albert of Habsburg), the first written records of the legend date to the latter part of the 15th century, when the Swiss Confederacy was gaining military and political influence. Tell is a central figure in Swiss national historiography, along with Arnold von Winkelried the hero of Sempach (1386). He was important as a symbol during the formative stage of modern Switzerland in the 19th century, known as the period of Restoration and Regeneration, as well as in the wider history of 18th- to 19th-century Europe as a symbol of resistance against aristocratic rule, especially in the Revolutions of 1848 against the House of Habsburg which still ruled Austria five hundred years later.

• Gioachino Antonio Rossini^{[n 1][n 2]} (29 February 1792 – 13 November 1868) was an Italian composer who gained fame for his 39 operas, although he also wrote many songs, some chamber music and piano pieces, and some sacred music. He set new standards for both comic and serious opera before retiring from large-scale composition while still in his thirties, at the height of his popularity.

  Born in Pesaro to parents who were both musicians (his father a trumpeter, his mother a singer), Rossini began to compose by the age of 12 and was educated at music school in Bologna. His first opera was performed in Venice in 1810 when he was 18 years old. In 1815 he was engaged to write operas and manage theatres in Naples. In the period 1810–1823 he wrote 34 operas for the Italian stage that were performed in Venice, Milan, Ferrara, Naples and elsewhere; this productivity necessitated an almost formulaic approach for some components (such as overtures) and a certain amount of self-borrowing. During this period he produced his most popular works including the comic operas L'italiana in Algeri, Il barbiere di Siviglia (known in English as The Barber of Seville) and La Cenerentola, which brought to a peak the opera buffa tradition he inherited from masters such as Domenico Cimarosa. He also composed opera seria works such as Otello, Tancredi and Semiramide. All of these attracted admiration for their innovation in melody, harmonic and instrumental colour, and dramatic form. In 1824 he was contracted by the Opéra in Paris, for which he produced an opera to celebrate the coronation of Charles X, Il viaggio a Reims (later cannibalised for his first opera in French, Le comte Ory), revisions of two of his Italian operas, Le siège de Corinthe and Moïse, and in 1829 his last opera, Guillaume Tell.

  Rossini's withdrawal from opera for the last 40 years of his life has never been fully explained; contributary factors may have been ill-health, the wealth his success had brought him, and the rise of spectacular grand opera under composers such as Giacomo Meyerbeer. From the early 1830s to 1855, when he left Paris and was based in Bologna, Rossini wrote relatively little. On his return to Paris in 1855 he became renowned for his musical salons on Saturdays, regularly attended by musicians and the artistic and fashionable circles of Paris, for which he wrote the entertaining pieces Péchés de vieillesse. Guests included Franz Liszt, Anton Rubinstein, Giuseppe Verdi, Meyerbeer and Joseph Joachim. Rossini's last major composition was his Petite messe solennelle (1863). He died in Paris in 1868.

• Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (German: [ˈjoːhan ˈkʁɪstɔf ˈfʁiːdʁɪç fɔn ˈʃɪlɐ]; 10 November 1759 – 9 May 1805) was a German poet, philosopher, physician, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller developed a productive, if complicated, friendship with the already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. They frequently discussed issues concerning aesthetics, and Schiller encouraged Goethe to finish works he left as sketches. This relationship and these discussions led to a period now referred to as Weimar Classicism. They also worked together on Xenien, a collection of short satirical poems in which both Schiller and Goethe challenge opponents of their philosophical vision.The coffin containing what was purportedly Schiller's skeleton was brought in 1827 into the Weimarer Fürstengruft (Weimar's Ducal Vault), the burial place of the house of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach in the Historical Cemetery of Weimar and later also Goethe's resting place. On 3 May 2008, scientists announced that DNA tests have shown that the skull of this skeleton is not Schiller's, and his tomb is now vacant.^[14] The physical resemblance between this skull and the extant death mask^[15] as well as to portraits of Schiller, had led many experts to believe that the skull was Schiller's.

  

  Germany's oldest Schiller memorial (1839) on Schillerplatz, Stuttgart

  The city of Stuttgart erected in 1839 a statue in his memory on a square renamed Schillerplatz. A Schiller monument was unveiled on Berlin's Gendarmenmarkt in 1871.

  There is a Friedrich Schiller statue on Belle Isle in Detroit Michigan. This statue of the German playwright was commissioned by Detroit's German-American community in 1908 at a cost of $12,000; the designer was Herman Matzen.

  His image appeared on the German Democratic Republic 10 Mark banknotes of the 1964 emission.^[16]

  In September 2008, Schiller was voted by the audience of the TV channel Arte as the second most important playwright in Europe after William Shakespeare.

  Freemasonry[edit]

  Some Freemasons speculate that Schiller was a Freemason, but this has not been proven.^[17]

  In 1787, in his tenth letter about Don Carlos, Schiller wrote:

  I am neither Illuminati nor Mason, but if the fraternization has a moral purpose in common with one another, and if this purpose for human society is the most important, ...^[18]

  In a letter from 1829, two Freemasons from Rudolstadt complain about the dissolving of their Lodge Günther zum stehenden Löwen that was honoured by the initiation of Schiller. According to Schiller's great-grandson Alexander von Gleichen-Rußwurm, Schiller was brought to the Lodge by Wilhelm Heinrich Karl von Gleichen-Rußwurm. No membership document has been found.^[18]

  Writing

  

  Kleinere prosaische Schriften. 1 (1792)

  Philosophical papers

  

  Goethe–Schiller Monument (1857), Weimar

  Schiller wrote many philosophical papers on ethics and aesthetics. He synthesized the thought of Immanuel Kant with the thought of the German Idealist philosopher, Karl Leonhard Reinhold. He elaborated Christoph Martin Wieland's concept of die schöne Seele (the beautiful soul), a human being whose emotions have been educated by reason, so that Pflicht und Neigung (duty and inclination) are no longer in conflict with one another; thus beauty, for Schiller, is not merely an aesthetic experience, but a moral one as well: the Good is the Beautiful. The link between morality and aesthetics also occurs in Schiller's controversial poem, "Die Götter Griechenlandes (The Gods of Greece)." The "gods" in Schiller's poem are thought by modern scholars to represent moral and aesthetic values, which Schiller tied to Paganism and an idea of enchanted nature.^[19] In this respect, Schiller's aesthetic doctrine shows the influence of Christian Theosophy.^[20]

  There is general consensus among scholars that it makes sense to think of Schiller as a liberal,^[21][22][23] and he is frequently cited as a cosmopolitan thinker.^{[24][25][26][27]} Schiller's philosophical work was particularly concerned with the question of human freedom, a preoccupation which also guided his historical researches, such as the Thirty Years' War and the Dutch Revolt, and then found its way as well into his dramas (the Wallenstein trilogy concerns the Thirty Years' War, while Don Carlos addresses the revolt of the Netherlands against Spain.) Schiller wrote two important essays on the question of the sublime (das Erhabene), entitled "Vom Erhabenen" and "Über das Erhabene"; these essays address one aspect of human freedom—the ability to defy one's animal instincts, such as the drive for self-preservation, when, for example, someone willingly sacrifices themselves for conceptual ideals.

  Dramas

  Schiller is considered by most Germans to be Germany's most important classical playwright. Critics like F.J. Lamport and Eric Auerbach have noted his innovative use of dramatic structure and his creation of new forms, such as the melodrama and the bourgeois tragedy. What follows is a brief, chronological description of the plays.

  • The Robbers (Die Räuber): The language of The Robbers is highly emotional, and the depiction of physical violence in the play marks it as a quintessential work of Germany's Romantic Sturm und Drang movement. The Robbers is considered by critics like Peter Brooks to be the first European melodrama. The play pits two brothers against each other in alternating scenes, as one quests for money and power, while the other attempts to create revolutionary anarchy in the Bohemian Forest. The play strongly criticises the hypocrisies of class and religion, and the economic inequities of German society; it also conducts a complicated inquiry into the nature of evil. Schiller was inspired by the play Julius of Tarent by Johann Anton Leisewitz.^[9]
  • Fiesco (Die Verschwörung des Fiesco zu Genua):
  • Intrigue and Love (Kabale und Liebe): The aristocratic Ferdinand von Walter wishes to marry Luise Miller, the bourgeois daughter of the city's music instructor. Court politics involving the duke's beautiful but conniving mistress Lady Milford and Ferdinand's ruthless father create a disastrous situation reminiscent of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Schiller develops his criticisms of absolutism and bourgeois hypocrisy in this bourgeois tragedy. Act 2, scene 2 is an anti-British parody that depicts a firing-squad massacre. Young Germans who refused to join the Hessians and British to quash the American Revolutionary War are fired upon.^[28]
  • Don Carlos: This play marks Schiller's entrée into historical drama. Very loosely based on the events surrounding the real Don Carlos of Spain, Schiller's Don Carlos is another republican figure—he attempts to free Flanders from the despotic grip of his father, King Phillip. The Marquis Posa's famous speech to the king proclaims Schiller's belief in personal freedom and democracy.
  • The Wallenstein trilogy: Consisting of Wallenstein's Camp, The Piccolomini, and Wallenstein's Death, these plays follow the fortunes of the treacherous commander Albrecht von Wallenstein during the Thirty Years' War.
  • Mary Stuart (Maria Stuart): This history of the Scottish queen, who was Elizabeth I's rival, portrays Mary Stuart as a tragic heroine, misunderstood and used by ruthless politicians, including and especially, Elizabeth.
  • The Maid of Orleans (Die Jungfrau von Orleans): about Joan of Arc
  • The Bride of Messina (Die Braut von Messina)
  • William Tell (Wilhelm Tell)
  • Demetrius (unfinished)