‘Ce mot de Wahrheit, quelle expression elle lui donna’

Vera Grund’s ‘“Ce mot de Wahrheit, quelle expression elle lui donna” – the melodrama, its performances and performers in late eighteenth-century Vienna’, deals with a hybrid genre where music accompanies or ‘comments on’ the dramatic dialogue. It has no singing actors and is often influenced by pantomime. Grund outlines its development, and how it spread from France around 1770 to German-speaking cities, with Georg Benda in Gotha as the most prominent composer. His melodramas had a deeper structural relationship between text and music than other composers’ works.

Based on Wolfgang Schimpf’s Lyrisches Theater (1988), she describes melodrama’s development in Vienna, where it quickly established itself. Grund gives an overview of works performed 1772–1805 at the court stages. Criticisms reveal that Viennese melodrama, especially with female protagonists, was strongly influenced by pantomime. Characteristic traits were a female title role, a small cast, a tempest scene, elaborate machinery, exquisite costumes, and music functioning as an interpreter of the text. Benda’s Ariadne auf Naxos (Gotha 1775) became a model. He had great success during his stay in Vienna in 1778–1779 and inspired others. Melodramas were also performed at suburban theatres, often parodies of ‘serious’ works, adapted to a popular culture as folk plays.