ABSTRACT
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's desire to elevate the Singspiel to an artistic level commensurate with the other arts in Germany, and with Italian opera buffa, inspired him to produce several works in this form. Johann Friedrich Reichardt's first collaboration with Goethe was on Claudine von Villa Bella, when he visited the poet in Weimar at the end of April 1789 and played through his rendition of this work. In Claudine von Villa Bella the poet shows how passionate love produces the greatest happiness available to men and women. As with Shakespeare's comedies, the idea of married love is celebrated, as the Singspiel ends with the promise of sexual harmony and a hope for happiness. Although Franz Schubert completed the Singspiel, the music for Acts II and III was burnt as fuel by Josef Huttenbrenner's servants during the Viennese revolution in 1848. Schubert lived in an age of Biedermeier sentimentality, where Ritterdrama and Zauberspiel were popular with Viennese audiences.
