15. Germania (Alberto Franchetti)

GERMANIA

Dramma lirico in a prologue, 2 scenes, and an epilogue
By Alberto Franchetti
Libretto : Luigi Illica
First performed : Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 11 March 1902

GIOVANNI FILIPPO PALM	Bass	Oreste Gennari
FEDERICO LOEWE, student	Tenor	Enrico Caruso
CARLO WORMS, student	Baritone	Mario Sammarco
CRISOGONO, student	Baritone	Michele Wigley
RICKE	Soprano	Amelia Pinto
JANE, her sister	Mezzo	Jane Bathory
LENE ARMUTH, an aged beggar woman	Mezzo	Teresa Ferraris
JEBBEL, her nephew	Soprano	Bice Silvestri
STAPPS, Protestant pastor	Bass	Giovanni Gravina
LUIGI ADOLFO GUGLIELMO LÜTZOW	Bass	Carlo Ragni
CARLO TEODORO KÖRNER	Tenor	Oreste Lombardi
LA SIGNORA HEDWIGE	Mezzo	Adele Ponzano
PETERS, a herdsman	Bass	Ettore Gennari
Chief of German police	Bass	Arcangelo Rossi
A Lady	Contralto	Bruna Properzi
A Youth	Contralto	E. D’Alessandro
Historical personages, students, soldiers, police officers, members and associates of the Tugendbund, Louisebund, and Black Knights; Forest Girls

SETTING: Germany, 1806 and 1813

And now for something truly obscure… A gripping historical opera by the rival of Puccini.

When I first encounter an unknown opera, I listen to it purely as music. When I heard Franchetti’s Germania, I was impressed. It’s STUNNING. Glorious choruses, post-Wagnerian symphonic writing, beautiful arias, and a strong sense of drama. It sounds like a cross between Puccini and Mahler.

Why, then, did it vanish, along with Franchetti’s other operas?

Let’s take a step back. Franchetti was, for a time, Puccini’s main rival, and two of his operas, Asrael and Germania, were smash hits in Europe and the Americas. He was also, like Meyerbeer, a wealthy Jew, and Mussolini banned his operas under the Racial Laws of 1938.

What, though, was an Italian composer doing writing an opera about German nationalism and resistance to French tyranny?

Franchetti was a Germanophile. He studied in Munich and Dresden, where he wrote his first symphony, and held German citizenship (apparently to divorce his wife; divorce was illegal in the Catholic stronghold of Italy until 1970).

It’s also less about nationalism (in its jingoistic sense – my mother, drunk or sober, as Chesterton said) than about something far nobler: the love of country that inspires heroic deeds.

The opera focuses on three German students, all resisting Napoleon’s occupation of Germany in 1806. Worms, a liberal, and Federico Loewe, a radical, both love Ricke. She is engaged to Loewe, but Worms has seduced her. This is a classic triangle in the line of Donizetti or Verdi, complicated by the fact that all three are well-intentioned, high-minded, young idealists.

Prologue — (Source: Archivio Storico Ricordi)

Prologue - Federico gives a letter to Ricke.png — Federico gives a letter to Ricke. (Source: Archivio Storico Ricordi)

The love element is, however, less important than politics. The opera is about the ideal of fatherland – what makes people fight and die for the liberty of their homeland – rather than the intimate love triangle.

With scant regard for Aristotle, each scene is set months or years apart. It seems a series of set-pieces, like Verdi’s early historical pageants, rather than a concentrated narrative flow. Like Verdi, the emotional core of the situation is what matters; dramatic effect is more important than how to get there. It might be dramatic, but is this cogent drama? Yes, once one grasps that the opera is like a sprawling historical novel, unified by its political theme, rather than by the characters’ emotions.

Synopsis

PROLOGUE

The outskirts of Nuremberg ; an old watermill on the River Pegnitz. August 1806.

Worms and students, disguised as millers, plot resistance against France.

The bookseller Johann Philipp Palm is hiding in the mill; he is a political fugitive, charged with selling treasonable material: a pamphlet that urged Germans to take arms against the French. German philosophers, poets, and musicians – among them Weber (making him, with Mozart and Salieri, one of the few opera composers to appear as a character in an opera!) – and students from every corner of Germany visit Palm in hiding, and dream of a German nation.

They sing an anthem based on Weber’s Wilde Jagd. Palm is betrayed by the poor boy Jebbel, and led away by the police. (He was judicially murdered.)

Jane e Palm, in primo piano il plenipotenziario Otto.png — Jane and Palm; Otto, the French Minister at Monaco, in the background. (Source: Archivio Storico Ricordi)

PART I

A corner of the Black Forest of Wurtemberg, in a forester’s rude hut. April.

Act I - In un angolo della Foresta Nera Wurtemberghese, nella rozza casupola di un boscaiuolo.png

Only this intensely dramatic and beautiful scene is intimate character-driven drama in the traditional Italian sense. Ricke and Federico marry.

Act I - Stapps parla agli sposi Federico e Ricke.png — Stapps speaks to the married Federico and Ricke. (Source: Archivio Storico Ricordi)

A love duet between the newlyweds is interrupted by the return of Worms, whom they think dead. What will this mean for their marriage? Will Ricke tell Federico that she has had an affair with Worms? Worms resolves to leave. When he has gone, Ricke decides to leave her husband, and, leaving her husband of an hour a note, sets out into the woods.

Federico realises the truth, and vows revenge. All this in the middle of a thunderstorm.

Federico e Jane — Federico and Jane. (Source: Archivio Storico Ricordi)

The meeting of the Louise-Bund, a branch of the Tugendbund (League of Virtue), a secret society established to revive the Prussian national spirit after Napoleon defeated their armies at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt. Worms is now head of the society, dedicated to overthrowing the French. The pastor Stapps, who married Ricke to Federico, carries in the remains of his son, Friedrich, who tried to assassinate Napoleon in Vienna and was shot. Jebbel confesses to betraying Palm to the police, and is sentenced to die, but Ludwig Adolf Wilhelm von Lützow recruits Jebbel for his army; Jebbel will be given the chance to redeem himself on the battlefield. Federico appears, masked, and challenges Worms to a duel.

Act II - Un adepto mascherato in piedi davanti a Worms e agli altri Fratelli.png — A masked adept standing in front of Worms and other Brothers. (Source: Archivio Storico Ricordi)

Worms is prepared to die, but Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Queen Consort of Prussia, suddenly appears, and reconciles the enemies.

Act II - Apparizione di una Donna e di uno dei suoi figli con in mano un mazzo di gigli azzurri.png — Appearance of a Lady and one of her sons, holding a bunch of blue lilies. (Source: Archivio Storico Ricordi)

“These two men, enemies in love, but brothers in patriotism, grasp the weapons once more, embracing, crying in tones rendered sublime by the emotion and enthusiasm of this great moment.” This effectively resolves the love triangle. In a majestic, hymnal ensemble, all present vow to “Die – die – die for Germany!”

PART II

Königsberg. The underground quarters of the Secret Society “Louise-bund” (branch of the League of Virtue).

Act II - A Koenigsberg. Nei sotterranei della SocietÃ segreta Louise-bund.png

INTERMEZZO SINFONICO

The Battle of Leipzig, October 1813.

EPILOGUE

The plain of Leipzig, between Rochlitz and Grimma, 19 October, 1813.

Act III - Nella piana di Lipsia, fra Rochlitz e Grimma, il 19 ottobre 1813. Al centro la figura di Ricke 2.png

Act III - Nella piana di Lipsia, fra Rochlitz e Grimma, il 19 ottobre 1813.png

The aftermath of the Battle of Leipzig (16–19 October 1813), also known as the Battle of the Nations, the largest pre-WWI battle, in which Napoleon was defeated for the first time. Ricke finds Federico dying; the two lovers are reunited.

Act III - Ricke vaga sul campo di battaglia.png — Ricke wandering on the battlefield. (Source: Archivio Storico Ricordi)

Worms has died on the battlefield, clasping the standard; Ricke covers his body with it, forgiving him.

“The sun’s last rays throw a lurid light in the western sky, and reveal in deep shadow the impressive spectacle of an army in retreat.

“The Grenadiers pass in silence across the dying sun! No more the song of triumph floats round the victorious standards, the eagles of the standards, with outstretched wings, resembling a flight of terrified birds. One solitary figure rides quite alone, on whom the red sun, red with blood, dances, his fine head bowed in thought on his breast. It is Napoleon. Within this blood-red halo of sunset (sunset, indeed!) he rides, alone with his great glory and his great defeat; his generals follow in silence, with all that vast shadow of horses, heads, plumes, arms and standards, across this tragic sunset, like some huge fantastic cavalcade of spectres.

FEDERICO: Germany! Free!

“So Federico dies in the arms of Ricke, with a vision of his country set free.

“Without a tear she gently lays down the beloved dead; sinking beside him, she drops her head upon the lifeless heart and awaits the approaching night, for these two their first and eternal wedding night.

“And in the distance, fading away on the red horizon, still moves that blot, a joyless, songless army.”