Die Geisterinsel (Reichardt)

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Die Geisterinsel is a singspiel in 3 acts by Johann Friedrich Reichardt to a libretto by Friedrich Wilhelm Gotter based on The Tempest by William Shakespeare.

The libretto by Gotter, after an earlier version by his friend Friedrich von Einsiedel, had already been hailed as a masterpiece by Goethe and first set by Fleischmann in 1796. Goethe also promoted Fleischmann's setting but the opera was not a success. The years 1798-1799 saw six more operas based on The Tempest, of which Reichardt's, commissioned by August Wilhelm Iffland for the Nationaltheater, Berlin, was both the most successful and the most successful of Reichardt's operas as a whole. It was premiered 6 July 1798. [1] [2]

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Die Geisterinsel is an opera libretto written by German poet and dramatist Friedrich Wilhelm Gotter (1746–1797), after an earlier version by his friend Friedrich von Einsiedel, based on Thomas Shadwell's operatic version of Dryden's The Enchanted Island, itself based on Shakespeare's The Tempest. After Gotter's death his widow was persuaded by Schiller to publish her late husband's libretto in his Die Horen in issues 8 and 9 of 1797. The libretto was first set by Johann Friedrich Anton Fleischmann for a Singspiel that premiered in 1798 in Weimar under Goethe's direction.

Events from the year 1798 in Germany.

References

  1. John Warrack German Opera: From the Beginnings to Wagner p.183
  2. Francien Markx E. T. A. Hoffmann, Cosmopolitanism, and the Struggle for German Opera p.61