The Language of Time

In Fidelio we listen to the characters singing beautiful music. What the characters hear is the clock ticking without mercy. If they do not solve their problem by a certain time, everything will fall apart for them—and: They have to use the appropriate language. Read part 4 of the series about the origin and linguistics of Beethoven’s Fidelio with excerpts of my book Die Frist ist um—Navigate the Language of 10 German Operas.

Florestan’s life hangs in the balance, at the mercy of the clock. While he, the enemy of the powerful, has made peace with his fate to die in the dungeon, his wife Leonore has no time to lose. She does not know of governor Pizarro’s plans to murder Florestan, but she must free her husband before the day prison guard Rocco has set for the wedding with his daughter Marzelline, the day when the governor intends to leave for Sevilla. Rocco’s humanity is tested. The pressure increases by the minute. How ought he act? Will he, the obedient servant of a tyrant, rise up at the end? Rocco’s passive resistance delays Pizarro’s plan. He spends time in the garden, spends time handing out extra rations to the prisoners, spends time inquiring if Fidelio can be with him in the dungeons. Rocco’s assistant Jaquino is getting impatient with Marzelline since his wooing is getting him nowhere. Marzelline snaps: Kein Wort, ich will nichts mehr hören. Be quiet, I do not want to hear anything more.

No one feels the urgency of the moment as keenly as the tyrant himself. Pizarro knows of the minister’s imminent arrival; he must act swiftly. His means is the imperative, the way of giving orders.

To give orders to a person you address with du, cut off the -en ending of the verb (Besteig! = climb!) and with irregular verbs, e.g., sehen, change the vowel:

Besteig den Turm! Sieh auf die Straßen!

To give orders to a person you address with Sie, follow Pizarro: Hauptmann! he yells at the captain, besteigen Sie den Turm, sehen Sie auf die Straßen von Sevilla. He uses the temporal connector sobald (as soon as): Sobald the Hauptmann sees a carriage, lassen Sie ein Signal geben (make the order to give a signal). Pizarro adds augenblicklich (immediately). He expects the “greatest promptitude” (größte Pünktlichkeit). Fort! auf eure Posten, he shouts.

He asks Rocco to murder Florestan, but Rocco refuses. Pizarro decides to do the bloody deed himself, laying out his plan in short breathless phrases: Ein Stoß – und er verstummt! One strike, and Florestan will fall silent! He only wishes Florestan could have more time to suffer: Er sterb in seinen Ketten, zu kurz war seine Pein. May he die in his chains, too short was his pain.

Eile f (hurry) and eilen are Pizarro’s words. He calls them out; Rocco calls them back.

Pizarro: Eile ihm sein Grab zu graben, zögre länger nicht, steig in den Kerker nieder.

Rocco: Nein, Herr, ich zögre länger nicht, ich steige eilend nieder. Here, Rocco turns the verb eilen into an adjective by adding a -d.

Rocco urges Fidelio with the adjective hurtig (swift). Fidelio must not hesitate, he insists: Nicht zaudern! Digging the grave, he tells him, will not take very long: Es währt nicht lang—währen means to last.

As the action drives toward the climax, as the enemies face each other for the first—and last!—time, with dagger and pistol and a fierce resolve between them, the tension becomes almost unbearable. Anything can happen, every second counts, and, yet, they hesitate—they look for the one-and-only moment to act. Words of intent become threats and curses, and as a result the subjunctive invades their speech. The subjunctive is a mode of verbs that expresses a wish; here it is a tool to heighten the suspense. We call it subjunctive 1, while subjunctive 2 indicates a thought experiment.

Pizarro wants Florestan to die. Instead of stating the fact er stirbt, he uses subjunctive 1: Er sterbe. May he die. He snarls at Florestan his intention to “rip the darkness of revenge to pieces”—to kill openly, in the light of day. Instead of stating the fact with der Rache Dunkel ist zerrissen, he says, der Rache Dunkel sei zerrissen. (In their poetic mind, the librettists see darkness as a shroud that can be torn or ripped to pieces.)

The subjunctive 1, also used for indirect speech, uses the first-person verb form (ich) sterbe for the third person (er, sie, es sterbe). The verb sein plays a special role. It changes from bin (ich bin) and ist (er ist) to sei, from sind (wir, sie sind) to seien.

Before Pizarro can thrust his dagger into Florestan’s heart, Leonore steps forward in this, the final moment that remains to her to act. Let him pierce her bosom first, she cries out, raises a pistol and warns, Der Tod sei dir geschworen für deine Mörderlust. May death be pledged to you (dir) for your murder-lust.

Soon read part 5 of the Fidelio series: No Happiness without Gold.

Of Joy and Murder

Fidelio has many languages: The language of Jein (neither ja nor nein as Leonore has to evade the romantic approaches of Marzelline, the prison ward’s daughter) or the language of rising and dwindling hope (of the prisoners and particularly Florestan), or the language of possession and dependence. (Here, the genitive kicks in!) However, nothing poses a greater contrast than the languages of murder and of joy. Read part 3 of the series about the origin and linguistics of Beethoven’s Fidelio with excerpts of my book Die Frist ist um—Navigate the Language of 10 German Operas.

Language of Murder.

The verb prefix zer- is a tool of destruction. You can reißen (to tear, to rip) something, e.g., a document, but it can still be restored. If you add zer-, you will have zerreißen, and the document is gone, torn to shreds. The participle of zerreißen is zerrissen: der Rache Dunkel sei zerrissen, as Pizarro cries out when he faces his enemy Florestan. May the darkness of vengeance be ripped to pieces.

The verb fleischen stems from Fleisch (meat) and means inflicting a flesh wound. Being fleischen (or gefleischt sein), the wounded person can heal and live on, but there is no chance of survival when the perpetrator adds a zer-. The victim will be zerfleischt—mauled, mangled. Pizarro goes for Florestan’s heart. Florestan shall know, wer ihm sein stolzes Herz zerfleischt.

Other terms of murder and fright are fürchten (to fear), Dolch m (dagger), Mörder m (murderer), Mörderlust f (lust to kill), Rächer m (avenger).

Language of Joy.

The German language provides expressions for joy beyond words with a little trick: it says what it is not by using un- as prefix or -los as suffix—or it simply adds über. Leonore and Florestan’s joy is namenlos (nameless), unnennbar (indescribable), and not only groß but übergroß. They feel himmlisches Entzücken (heavenly rapture). When Leonore removes Florestan’s shackles, both rejoice, Welch ein Augenblick, unaussprechlich süßes Glück. What a moment, unspeakably sweet happiness.

Read soon part 4 of the Fidelio series: The Language of Time.

“You Saved a Stranded Ship”

Mozart wrote three operas with one librettist, da Ponte; Ludwig van Beethoven needed three librettists for one opera, Fidelio. It took nine years and three premieres until its final version reached its place in the opera repertoire throughout the world. Here is part 2 about the origin and language of Fidelio with excerpts from my book Die Frist ist um—Navigate the Language of 10 German Operas.

The first librettist, Joseph Sonnleithner, translated the original libretto from French into German, but did little to keep it short and concise. After the premiere in November 1805 fell through, Beethoven immediately went to work revising the opera with another librettist, Stephan von Breuning, a court official and like Beethoven an expatriate from Bonn. Von Breuning decluttered the text and condensed the libretto from three acts to two. The opera premiered again six months later under the title Leonore, before an excited audience and more enthusiastic critics. Only this time, Beethoven and the theater management were at odds with each other. The reason for their argument is not clear. Joseph Röckel, who sang Florestan, claimed Beethoven had accused the theater management of cheating him of his fees. When the management denied the allegation, Beethoven asked for his score and left.

Leonore, a.k.a. Fidelio, would have remained a faint memory as Beethoven’s sole attempt to write an opera, had there not been three Inspizienten (stage managers) at the Viennese Theater am Kärntnertor who at the brink of poverty chose it for a benefit performance eight years later. At that time, in 1814, Beethoven was at the height of his success, and performing his music would attract a huge audience—and with it good money for the Inspizienten. Beethoven happily agreed to donate the opera, but not without major changes. He asked the manager of the Theater an der Wien, Georg Friedrich Treitschke, to work on the libretto. As playwright and director, Treitschke had a better dramatic instinct than his predecessor. He rewrote the dialogues, shortening them. Beethoven duly “tore from the score” what Treitschke considered handlungsleer (devoid of action) and kalt, as he later recalled. He objected to Beethoven’s idea of turning Florestan’s opening piece into a grand aria. A starved prisoner who is close to death would not exhibit such an outburst of energy, Treitschke argued. He changed the text and in the final lines added an angel, Leonoren, der Gattin so gleich, “so similar” to Leonore, who leads Florestan to heaven. Beethoven, grateful for this solution, improvised for hours on Treitschke’s piano to work out the right music. Later he wrote to the librettist that the opera would have earned him, Beethoven, “the crown of a martyr” had Treitschke not “put into it so much effort and useful editing. You saved the stranded ship.”

The theater insisted on calling the opera Fidelio, not Leonore, as Beethoven had intended. The libretto now focused on liberation and on the struggle against tyranny. The opera itself, first performed on May 23, 1814, has been used by singers and directors as a political statement ever since.

Read soon part 3: The Language of Joy and Murder

How Fidelio Fooled the Censors

No opera is more suited for these days, no opera is more current, more inspiring for those who fight for freedom and peace than Fidelio, Beethoven’s Befreiungsoper (rescue opera). The following series about the origin and the language of the opera is comprised of abstracts from my book Die Frist ist um—Navigate the Language of 10 German Operas. Part 1.

Fidelio celebrates the struggle against tyranny and for liberation, and it was a war that kept the audience from seeing its premiere. The Viennese were up in arms against Napoleon’s invasion. The city had been shelled for a week, when the curtain of the Theater an der Wien was lifted on November 20, 1805. Only the critics, oblivious against any harm that might occur, went to the performance. They dismissed the opera as too long and the text as repetitious. The theater management withdrew the opera after two performances. However, they could not take away its future.

In the previous decades, the liberal ideas of the French Revolution had been sweeping through intellectual and artistic circles in Europe. A new form of opera, the French “rescue opera”, began appearing in theaters everywhere, purveying dramatic stories in which the weak are saved from danger, and humanism triumphs. One of them, Léonore; ou, L’Amour conjugal, composed by Pierre Gaveaux, drew Beethoven’s attention. It had had its premiere in Paris five years earlier and was based on an event its librettist, Jean Nicolas Bouilly, had observed himself: during the bloody phase of the revolution, a noblewoman dressed as a peasant slipped into a jail to get close to her imprisoned husband. When guards appeared flanking him, she raised a pistol to demand his release, but the guards ducked and whisked the man away.

This story was perfect for the free-spirited composer. He teamed up with the poet Joseph Sonnleithner, who translated Bouilly’s libretto but kept the meter of the French original. Beethoven had been toying with the idea of traveling to Paris and presenting the opera in French, but he changed his mind. In Vienna, the words of truth—dangerous words—should be spoken and sung in German.

The greatest measure of success for a piece of art, especially an eighteenth-century libretto, is its failure at the censor’s office. Fidelio received this honor almost from the get-go. The cast had already been chosen and the rehearsals had just begun when the Polizei-Hofstelle, the censors of the Kaiser, banned the text. Obviously, it was not enough that Sonnleithner kept Bouilly’s choice of location, Spain, while moving the time period of the plot to the sixteenth century. The censors considered the libretto’s ideas too dangerous for the aristocratic regime. Sonnleithner responded with a well-worded letter, pleading innocence to the best of his ability. Fidelio portrays nothing more than a “touching image of female virtue and of the evil governor who seeks vengeance solely for private reasons.” Indicating he might enjoy the sympathies of an authority higher than the censors, he wrote that Empress Maria Theresa herself found the text “very beautiful.” Also, and this did the trick, the theater had planned to premiere the opera on the empress’s saint’s day. Three days later, the ban was lifted.

Read soon: Part 2—“You Saved a Stranded Ship”