Among the musical venues at the palace of Haydn's employer, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, was a marionette theater. Haydn composed several little operas for this venture so alien to the 19th century's way of thinking about music, and sure enough, most have been lost. The present work, Philemon und Baucis (1773), survives in the most complete form, but still took a good deal of editing of text and music to bring it to a performable state. The text restoration by Hermann Beil, done in conjunction with the 200th anniversary of ...
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Among the musical venues at the palace of Haydn's employer, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, was a marionette theater. Haydn composed several little operas for this venture so alien to the 19th century's way of thinking about music, and sure enough, most have been lost. The present work, Philemon und Baucis (1773), survives in the most complete form, but still took a good deal of editing of text and music to bring it to a performable state. The text restoration by Hermann Beil, done in conjunction with the 200th anniversary of Haydn's death in 2009, is admirably effective and brings this very rare Haydn work alive. The piece is like a singspiel, with spoken dialogue (some of it trimmed by Beil to restore continuity destroyed by missing music) framing sung arias by six marionette characters taken from an episode in the "Metamorphoses" by Roman poet Ovid. You might be expecting satirical comedy from a marionette show, but the doggerel-like libretto offers something different, reworking the Roman material into...
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Add this copy of Philemon Und Baucis Oder Jupiters Reise Auf Die to cart. $28.65, new condition, Sold by Importcds rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Sunrise, FL, UNITED STATES, published 2009 by BIS.
