Emanuel Schikaneder — then as now best known as the librettist of Mozart’s “Magic Flute” and its first Papageno — approached Beethoven in early 1803 with an opera project entitled “Vestas Feuer” (“The Vestal Flame”) with a setting in Ancient Rome.
Working with Schikaneder was a dual-edged sword for Beethoven: Mozart’s collaboration with Schikaneder had created a masterpiece, so maybe that magic could be repeated. On the other hand, whatever Beethoven did with Schikaneder would be compared with “The Magic Flute.”
“Vestas Feuer” — the title of the libretto that Schikaneder wrote for Beethoven — refers to the flame that is supposed to burn forever in the Temple of Vesta, the Roman goddess of hearth and home. The women responsible for keeping the flame burning are the Vestal Virgins.
Beethoven had to wait until October 1803 before Schikaneder delivered the libretto of “Vestas Feuer” to him. Beethoven started working on the score in November, but towards the end of December he quit when he decided to move onto something more to his liking.
Beethoven only composed music for the first scene of “Vestas Feuer,” in which all four principals of the opera appear: The slave Malo (tenor) warns his master Porus (bass) about the surreptitious relationship between his daughter Volivia (soprano) and Sartagones (tenor), whose father is an enemy of Porus. Porus confronts them but their true love convinces him to give them his blessing (“May their love be ever true, / Ever true unto the grave”), much to the dismay of Malo, who also loves Volivia.
One of the rare recordings of Beethoven’s opera fragment “Vestas Feuer” is available on Naxos, who have graciously made the libretto available online. Click the “Sung Text” link here.
For more background information on Beethoven’s “Vestas Feuer,” a chapter by Lewis Lockwood is available from the book Variations on the Canon: Essays on Music in Honor of Charles Rosen on His Eightieth Birthday.
#Beethoven250 Day 179
Vestas Feuer, Scene 1 (Hess 115), 1803
A Deutsche Grammaphone recording conducted by Andrew Davis with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
For opera subjects and style, Beethoven had been drifting in a direction away from Schikaneder. He had become interested in what the French opera composers were doing, as well as the Italian composer Luigi Cherubini, who had been composing French operas in Paris since 1794.
On 4 January 1804, Beethoven wrote in a letter
I have finally broken with Schikaneder, whose empire has really been entirely eclipsed by the light of the brilliant and attractive French operas. Meanwhile he has kept me back for fully six months, and I have let myself be deceived simply because, since he is undeniably successful at creating stage effects, I hoped that he would produce something more brilliant than usual. But how greatly have I been misled. …
Well, I withdrew from my arrangement with him, although I for my part had composed several numbers. Just picture to yourself a Roman subject (of which I had been told neither the scheme nor anything else whatever) and language and verses such as could proceed only out of the mouths of our Viennese apple-women — Well, I have quickly had an old French libretto adapted and am now beginning to work on it.” (Emily Anderson, Letters of Beethoven, No. 87a)
The libretto that Beethoven had found was Jean-Nicholas Bouilly’s “Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal.” Bouilly claimed it was based on a true incident during the Reign of Terror when a woman disguised herself as a man to get inside a prison and free her husband.
Sounds interesting!