The Count of Gleichen:

Schubert’s sketches are difficult to read and don’t even give us his last thoughts, since on his deathbed he said he had lots of new ideas for it. However, attempts have been made to realise performable versions of the work[1]. Some have been staged (in Meiningen and in Cincinnati), one of them (the "Cincinnati version") is available on CD. In the summer of 1997, a concert performance took place in Graz, where Richard Dünser, an Austrian composer, presented his version of the work.

One of the main problems for any realisation is the final scene, which was not sketched by Schubert. The Cincinnati version makes a kind of Schubert pasticcio, introducing the Benedictus of the contemporary Mass in E flat, which happens to be in a related tonality. The Graz version is more audacious: the missing finale is realised in a polystylistic way, Schubert reminiscences and modern features (clusters, atonality) providing a welcome distancing.

Perhaps Schubert himself had already shown the way. At the beginning of the second act, Bauernfeld quotes a poem by Goethe, Wonne der Wehmut (Delight in melancholy), set by Schubert as D260, in an aria for Ottilie. Schubert orchestrates the melody he had composed for that poem in 1815 and enlarges it into an elegiac air. For Suleika’s prayer later in the act, he quotes the melody of another song, Die Betende (Laura at Prayer), D102, from 1814 on words by Matthisson. The trio for the Count, Ottilie and Suleika has a more distant link to the contemporary song Die Nebensonnen (The Phantom Suns) from Winterreise, where the symbolism of the number three is predominant. These facts give more reasons to argue against the widely held opinion that Schubert’s operatic creations are isolated from the rest of his work.

Apart from this, Schubert’s unfinished score shows other interesting features, including an ability to compose for choruses and ensembles that we have seen in earlier works. They are not so predominant as in his earlier opera, Fierrabras, but provide the framework as well as a definition of the climate: the introductory chorus in the first act or the choruses of the pilgrims in the second act deserve to be as well known as the introduction of Der Freischütz or the pilgrims’ chorus from Tannhäuser. Schubert had not previously shown us his ability to create really dramatic arias. Here again Weber’s influence on the young composer is apparent. Perhaps Weber’s death in 1826 had a similar effect on him as Beethoven’s in 1827: the sudden absence of an overwhelming shadow? The Suleika aria: Ja, ich liebe ihn, can be compared to Agathe’s Leise, leise or Huon’s cavatina in Oberon. We have here the dramatic picture of a person’s complex feelings and at the same time a source of energy which catalyses the action, without the somewhat artificial character of Schubert’s earlier dramatic aria, that of Florinda in Fierrabras. Nevertheless, we get the feeling that, in this work too, the best moments would again have been the lyrical ones. Another example is the duet between Suleika and Ottilie in the second act: only the lack of the orchestration prevents us putting it on the same level as the duet between Florinda and Maragond from Fierrabras. On the other hand, the comical scenes between Kurt, Fatime, Hassan and Susanne are lengthy but the right tone is found for the scene where Kurt describes Oriental habits to the folks of Gleichen: a simple strophic folksong with reactions by the chorus.

Perhaps, against Bauernfeld’s primary intentions, Schubert saw it as a utopian story. That had been the case with his two earlier grand operas, Alfonso und Estrella and Fierrabras. In both cases, the story is one of a conflict between two worlds. Alfonso und Estrella brings us into a fictitious mediaeval Spain and shows us the conflict between two rulers. Significantly, the scenes of war or violence are far less enhanced by Schubert than the love story à la Romeo and Juliet between the two young people and the scenes that describe individual feelings in general. Fierrabras is a combination of two legends from the Middle Ages which belong to the cycle of stories around Charlemagne and his fights with the Saracens. The background of war is hardly handled musically, there are many more moments of intimacy and passion and the description of three love stories which are at different degrees utopian: The Saracen Fierrabras with Charlemagne’s daughter Emma, Emma herself with the knight Eginhard and the other Christian knight Roland with the Saracen princess Florinda. Of course, only two of them can come to a happy end and Fierrabras has to be satisfied with the pride of becoming one of Charlemagne’s knights.

Der Graf von Gleichen would have been a further step in this evolution. The conventional description of Turkish cruelty is absent; as are warlike tunes, but instead we have another "impossible love story", for a different reason this time. As in Fierrabras where the most active person musically was Florinda, the only one to sing a solo aria, and an passionate one, here the movement is led by two women: the young and active Suleika and the older and more reflexive Ottilie. As a consequence, Suleika’s prayer in the second act is far more convincing from a musical point of view than the Count’s Du gütiger Vater (thou Father of goodness). Compared to other "Turkish" operas, the opportunity of composing marches and other characteristic music is hardly used. Such a vision leaves little room for comical elements and thus Schubert cannot overcome the discrepancies of the libretto. His music would put the opera rather in the "semiseria" category, like Bellini’s Sonnambula (composed only three years later). Of course, Italian virtuosity is absent from the Der Graf von Gleichen, but the two composers share the ability of energising the drama by the musical expression of feelings and their use of the chorus as a component of the atmosphere - although Schubert may have got it from Gluck through Salieri. The problem remains, once more, the finale.

Der Graf von Gleichen thus appears to be a tantalising fragment, a sort of threshold to a new kind of German opera[2], a new way of combining elements of the Italian aesthetic into the German one. Thus it stands somehow between the styles: on one hand, the inherited forms of opera buffa and Turkish singspiel, on the other hand the future forms of Offenbachian operetta, historical drama, operatic tale. Of course speculations about what it should have been if completed are rather vain, but they show that Schubert, whose aesthetic development went at different speeds, depending on which field he was concerned with, was about to set milestones in the field of opera as well as he already had with song, chamber music, piano and symphony. The modern attempts at revival provide at least an opportunity to experience it live.

Unfortunately, the CD recording of the Cincinnati realisation suffers from being rather poorly sung. The orchestration is pleasant, though, as is the conducting by Gerhard Samuel. The Graz version, with better singers in the main parts, offers a more interesting attempt to complete the finale; the orchestration is however rather thick and thus far from any Schubertian style. A recording of it would be welcome though. The Meiningen production has been recorded by the German TV and will hopefully be broadcast soon.

Footnotes

[1] In her book Schubert’s Music for the Theatre (Schneider, Tutzing 1991), which discusses all of Schubert’s stage works in great detail, Elizabeth Norman McKay reminds us that both the libretto and a facsimile score (edited by Ernst Hilmar, published by Schneider, Tutzing, 1988) are now published, and that we can expect further discoveries about the music. Ed.

[2] McKay, ibid, does not agree with this assessment. She writes: "…Schubert did not attempt, in Der Graf von Gleichen, to write a new kind of opera; his style was still limited to a combination of early romantic operatic ideas and forms, with an increasing tendency towards continuous flow of music.". Ed.