Notes for: August 2, 2011
This is a soprano “romance” taken from Die Verschworenen (The Conspirators), a farcical singspiel (operetta) composed by Schubert in 1823, but never performed until 1861. It was originally written with an orchestral accompaniment, but long after Schubert’s death it was published as a separate piece with a piano and clarinet accompaniment by Schubert’s nephew, Dr. Eduard Schneider.
The libretto for the singspiel was published by the playwright, I. F. Cantelli, in February 1823, with a challenge to Vienna’s composers to set it to music. Schubert accepted the challenge, completing the score in April.
The Austrian imperial censors considered the plot subversive – there could be no talk of conspiracies in Metternich’s Vienna. First they changed the title to “Domestic Warfare,” and then they blocked the entire production. It was not until 1861 that the operetta was produced and 1889 that the work was published.
The tongue-in-cheek libretto is an adaption of Aristophanes’s cynical anti-war comedy Lysistrata to medieval Germany at the time of the Crusades. A group of women, tired of the repeated absences of their crusading husbands, vow to withhold all matrimonial rights until the men promise to abandon their martial exploits. In response, the husbands renounce their wives unless the women fight alongside them.
The operetta, in one act, consists of 12 sections for varied voices and combinations of voices. We hear section No. 2, “I creep about in fear and silence,” in which Helene laments the departure of her husband to the wars the day after their wedding. She sings of her lonely and loveless life in one of Schubert’s tenderest melodies. The featured part for the clarinet was in Schubert’s original scoring.