Schubert on 3 - Rosamunde

[Ravensbourne]

In Afternoon on 3 - The Spirit of Schubert, Episode 2, we have:

• Schubert: Overture Alfonso und Estrella (D.732)
  
• Schubert: Rosamunde (D.797) complete with the original overture played at the first performance.

Could someone explain what the original overture played at the first performance was?

[Chris Newman]

Schubert's incidental music to a failed play from 1823called Rosamunde, Fürstin von Zypern ("Rosamunde, Princess of Cyprus") by Helmina von Chézy was long thought to be lost. However George Grove and Arthur Sullivan were given permission to rummage through the late composer's effects and came across a lot of valuable stuff, most notably the score to the play Rosamunde. There were two overtures which both got published from the bundle.The Overture to Alfonso und Estrella (D.732) originally written for an opera of that name is the one actually used in von Chézy's play. The overture, sometimes called Rosamunde (D.797) is really the overture to another work of Schubert's The Magic Harp (Die Zauberharfe) which happened to get printed with the complete music. Obviously neither piece was especially written for the play, but both are beautiful and deserve airings.

[Ravensbourne]

That's what I understood to be the case. So how does the Overture Alfonso und Estrella (D.732), played by the BBC SO, differ from the original overture played at the first performance of Rosamunde, played by the BBC Phil?

[Roehre]

That's what I undertsood to be the case. So how does the Overture Alfonso und Estrella (D.732), played by the BBC SO, differ from the original overture played at the first performance of Rosamunde, played by the BBC Phil?

Two rather different pieces of music, the overture which we now know as the Rosamunde overture being the more interesting in scope and ideas. Pretends to have a connection with especially the first entr'acte music, the one which also can serve as finale of the Unfinished, something you wouldn't think it were the case with the Alfonso-overture..

[Ravensbourne]

Am I the only one that bothered to listen to the broadcast?

[Roehre]

Am I the only one that bothered to listen to the broadcast?

The very same recording/performance of Rosamunde has been broadcast very recently, some 3 or 4 weeks ago IIRC.
The whole concert consisted of works I know (very) well, and all of it is available on CD.
As the time I can use to listen to music is very restricted at the moment, I prefer to hand pick little snippets which one most likely never again get the opportunity to listen to them.

[Ravensbourne]

I just listened again to Afternoon on 3 - The Spirit of Schubert, Episode 2 on BBC iPlayer. The same overture was indeed broadcast twice, an hour apart.

[Pabmusic]

Schubert's incidental music to a failed play from 1823called Rosamunde, Fürstin von Zypern ("Rosamunde, Princess of Cyprus") by Helmina von Chézy was long thought to be lost. However George Grove and Arthur Sullivan were given permission to rummage through the late composer's effects and came across a lot of valuable stuff, most notably the score to the play Rosamunde. There were two overtures which both got published from the bundle.The Overture to Alfonso und Estrella (D.732) originally written for an opera of that name is the one actually used in von Chézy's play. The overture, sometimes called Rosamunde (D.797) is really the overture to another work of Schubert's The Magic Harp (Die Zauberharfe) which happened to get printed with the complete music. Obviously neither piece was especially written for the play, but both are beautiful and deserve airings.

Schubert had only three weeks to produce music for von Chézy's play, which explains why there's so much borrowed stuff in it. It's said that he actually produced the music in five days! The overture he used was the one from Alfonso und Estrella, which he had recently finished in the hope that Weber would produce it. That hope vanished when Schubert tactlessly told Weber that he didn't like Euryanthe as much as Die Freischütz because it had "too little melody". So he borrowed the overture for Rosamunde, but he wasn't satisfied because he thought it "too noisy" in its new context. Since there were no further performances of the play, we don't know what Schubert would have done about an overture. But in 1827, the publisher Leidesdorf published a piano-duet "Ouverture zum Drama Rosamunde", which turned out to be the overture to another unsuccessful opera, Die Zauberhärfe. Schubert was a friend of Leidesdorf and there's no reason to believe this was done without Schubert's approval. The parts were published in 1854, and a score in 1865, (by Spina) and used the same title. However, when Breitkopf und Härtel's Schuberts Gesamtausgabe was published at the end of the century, the editor (Brahms?) decided to revert to the Alfonso und Estrella overture, I imagine because it had been used for the only production.

Grove and Sullivan's famous visit to Vienna wasn't until 1867, after Die Zauberhärfe had been published as the overture to Rosamunde. What Grove did, of course, was to discover the original score (which has no overture) and to recognise that the B minor entr'acte may have been a sketch for the last movement of the Unfinished. The score is in the RCM library.

[Ravensbourne]

There was some justification in BBC Radio 3 presenting the B minor entr'acte in two different contexts, 25 minutes apart. Presenting the overture as a stand-alone piece, and then an hour later as the overture for a piece it wasn't written for, seemed a tad more dubious.

[Pabmusic]

Presenting the overture as a stand-alone piece, and then an hour later as the overture for a piece it wasn't written for, seemed a tad more dubious.

So it does!