The Count of Gleichen:

Among all the compositions Schubert left for posterity, his 16 operatic attempts are probably the least well known. However, opera was a form to which he devoted himself during his entire creative life. His first opera sketch, Der Spiegelritter, dates from as early as 1813. It was to be followed by several dramatic works, which include operetta-like Singspiel (Die Verschworenen, 1823), antique subjects (Adrast, 1819), oriental legends (Sakuntala, 1822), mediaeval fantasies (Des Teufels Lustschloss, 1814), comedies by Goethe (Claudine von Villa Bella, 1815), tragedies inspired by Schiller (Die Bürgschaft, 1815) as well as productions from the Viennese circle (Die Zwillingsbrüder, 1820). Many of them are unfinished (Der Spiegelritter, Sakuntala, Die Bürgschaft, Adrast), some of them partially preserved (Claudine, Rosamunde), others scarcely sketched (Rüdiger). Only three of them were staged during Schubert’s life, albeit with a modest success: Die Zwillingsbrüder, Die Zauberharfe and Rosamunde. Two of them have achieved the status of a "grand opera" and, along with Schubert’s first completed opera Des Teufels Lustschloss, have been successfully produced a few times in the last few years: Alfonso und Estrella (1820) and Fierrabras (1823).

This article is about one of these works: Der Graf von Gleichen (The Count of Gleichen) D916. It was Schubert’s last operatic attempt, one of the few works death prevented him from finishing (another being the Symphony in D, D936A), and a work Schubert was speaking vividly about on his deathbed. Apart from the fact that the composer seemed to hold it in particular esteem, the proximity of masterpieces like Winterreise, the String Quintet, the E flat Mass or the late piano sonatas should awaken our curiosity for this composition. And, more than all the legends that were created around the Viennese maestro, the story of this opera is really an interesting one.

The librettist, Eduard von Bauernfeld, was one of Schubert’s closest friends during his last years, though. Apart from the opera we have one Schubert song after a poem by him (Der Vater mit dem Kind, D906), plus the lost Das Totenhemdchen, D864 and Schubert used his translation of Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona for his song An Sylvia, D891.

Unlike other occasional librettists amongst Schubert’s friends (say, Franz von Schober), Bauernfeld was a professional writer, in charge of the completion of Tieck-Schlegel’s famous German Shakespeare edition and author of several theatre pieces, some of which are still presented on the stage today. It is thus no wonder that Schubert, shortly after they made friends (in 1824), thought of him as an eventual librettist.

As a youngster Schubert had composed for himself without really thinking of a performance. But he became aware that, at least at that time, a stage work could not be published before it was performed, that a stage work could not be given in a private evening for some enthusiastic friends who would want to hear it again and again, and that he first had to match the taste of his audience before he could influence it. Thus, for a variety of reasons he compromised: Alfonso und Estrella was written to a libretto specially shaped to fit into the conceptions of the Court Theatre Director, Fierrabras on a text by the secretary of one of the major stages, Rosamunde for a play by the influential blue stocking and Weber’s collaborator Helmina von Chézy. The rather modest successes of these ventures (2 performances for Rosamunde, none for the other works) proved to him, if proof were needed, that this was not a good strategy. The great Viennese theatrical writer in Schubert’s circle, Franz Grillparzer, was too famous and too inaccessible, and perhaps, not flexible enough to write a libretto for the still unsuccessful opera composer. In fact, their relationship seems to have developed slowly into esteem and maybe friendship but we have to wait till Schubert’s very last months to find Ständchen and Mirjams Siegesgesang, two choral works (the second actually more a cantata) on texts especially written for him by Grillparzer.

So we can imagine the composer’s pleasure when he was introduced to Bauernfeld. On the other hand, the young writer was strongly impressed by the musician and, after their first encounter, noted in his diary he would try to get closer to him.

As early as 1825, it seems that the plan for a Bauernfeld-Schubert collaboration was born. Schubert thought of an opera about "The Enchanted Rose", a mediaeval epic by Ernst Schulze, whose Poetical Diary he was using for about ten songs, some of which are among his most famous (e.g. Im Frühling, D887). Bauernfeld did not seem to be quite so happy about this idea; he had probably noticed that the "legend" Schulze had wrought would need to be entirely rewritten in order to match the expectations of a stage work and that it would probably not be worth the trouble. Thus he himself proposed the subject of the Count of Gleichen, a "true" legend this time, which he had come across in Musäus‘s collection of folk tales, and which also appears among the tales published by the brothers Grimm. With Schubert’s agreement he started to write down the play in the spring of 1826. As an experienced theatrical writer he faced the challenge of writing an opera libretto very seriously; in his memoirs he mentions he had adopted Mozart’s point of view and tried to write a play where "the poetry should be the music’s obedient daughter"[1]. Schubert could barely wait till he had completed it and, after studious holidays where he wrote teasingly "he had already composed and sung the music for the main scenes"[2], Bauernfeld could solemnly give the composer the complete libretto on 10 July 1826.

Schubert was enthusiastic about this, the first professional libretto written especially for him (we should remember that his other specially written librettos were far from being professional) and began composing at once. He did not even wait for the approval of the censors, without which there would be no hope of the opera being staged or even published in Austria. The verdict came in October 1826, and was a negative one. Schubert’ s reaction, as stated by his and Bauernfeld’s common friend the painter Moritz von Schwind, was to compose it anyway. He was already used to composing for his drawer, moreover it seems that Grillparzer offered his help to have the opera staged outside Austria (although former attempts to have Alfonso and Estrella staged in Berlin or Dresden had proven unsuccessful). Afterwards, and until his last weeks of life, when he seemed to be troubled about not having completed the orchestration, Schubert remained very quiet about it. The analysis of the paper he used shows he sketched the score in many periods, leaving it aside for a while, then reassuming the work, and that he did this many times. In the meantime he composed a bunch of masterpieces of almost every kind.

In his Memoirs, Bauernfeld tells us that during his last illness Schubert tried to interest him in writing another libretto, but the reason for this is still unclear: did the composer think the libretto for the Count of Gleichen was so exciting he would like to get another one of the same quality? Did he think the libretto was so inaccurate he would rather start the composition of another opera from scratch? Did he think the libretto was good but, being having been banned by the censors it was useless to compose it and he should rather recycle what he had already written? We have no hints to answer these questions. What remains are sketches for the entire opera except for the final scene and, as he often did for songs but rarely for librettos, he scrupulously annotated the text, altering some passages. In October 1828, he was worried about the orchestration, which in fact he had scarcely drafted.

Footnotes

[1] Mozart in a letter to his father Leopold (17. Oct. 1781) about the "Abduction from the Seraglio"

[2] From Villach, early May 1826. Bauernfeld and Mayerhofer to Schubert. See O E Deutsch, Schubert A Documentary Biography, Dent, 1946, no. 653.