Die Entführung aus dem Serail

»I will make the symphony, the chorus in the first act and the final chorus with Turkish music,« wrote Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to his father Leopold on August 1, 1781 about the planned new Singspiel. Mozart implemented the ubiquitous exotic »alla turca« fashion musically with recourse to elements of the popular »Jantischarenmusik« and expanded his orchestra accordingly with instruments such as the bass drum and the triangle. The »exotic« element is only one aspect of this major departure in the genre of the German Singspiel. Carl Maria von Weber's assessment that Mozart had already reached the »maturity level« of his music with the Entführung became famous. In fact, with this score, the 26-year-old presented himself as a complete, yet ingeniously sensitive composer with an incomparably fine sense of musical dramaturgy and great innovative power. The use of terrace dynamics with their rapidly changing forte-piano contrasts, which are more pronounced here than in any other of Mozart's stage works, is exemplary. The work proved to be a challenge even for the most discerning ears: »An awful lot of notes, dear Mozart«, Joseph II is said to have remarked after the first performance. But Mozart knew: »Just as many notes, Your Majesty, as are necessary.«

 

»The story of the Abduction from the Seraglio has its roots in France, specifically in the so-called »histoires galantes«, a genre of novels that became increasingly orientalized in the course of the first great exotic fashion towards the end of the 17th century. Despite a wide range of variation within the genre, one plot line became constitutive for the genre: the separation of a pair of lovers due to adverse circumstances and their efforts to find their way back to each other. Under the influence of Orientalism, the stories were gradually relocated entirely to the Middle East. The circumstances that led to the separation of the lovers were almost always shipwrecks with subsequent capture by pirates. The story ends when the ship sails into an (Algerian) port city, where the Europeans are immediately sold. In this way, the unsuspecting women fall into the hands of a pasha who either incorporates them into his own harem or delivers them to the sultan in Constantinople. It is only when the seeking lover enters the foreign world that the fate of the Europeans takes a turn.« (From: Thomas Betzwieser: Exotik Fremde Exil, program book for the production).

 

(Source: wiener-staatsoper.at)