(The Ban on Love, WWV 38), is an early comic opera in two acts by Richard Wagner, with the libretto written by the composer after Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. Described as a , it was composed in early 1836.
Restrained sexuality versus eroticism plays an important role in ; these themes recur throughout much of Wagner's output, most notably in Tannhäuser, Die Walküre and Tristan und Isolde. In each opera, the self-abandonment to love brings the lovers into mortal combat with the surrounding social order. In , because it is a comedy, the outcome is a happy one: unrestrained sexuality wins as the carnival of the entire population goes rioting on after curtain-fall.
Das Liebesverbot was Wagner's second opera and his first to be performed. It has many signs of an early work, carrying a style modelled closely on contemporary French and Italian comic opera. It is also referred to as the forgotten comedy, being one of Wagner's only two comic works along with Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
Performance history
Wagner conducted the premiere in 1836 at the Stadttheater Magdeburg. Poorly attended and with a lead singer who forgot the words and had to improvise, it was a resounding flop and its second performance had to be cancelled after a fist fight between the prima donna's husband and the lead tenor broke out backstage before the curtain had even risen; only three people were in the audience. It was never performed again in Wagner's lifetime.
The opera was rarely performed in the following hundred years. In the United Kingdom, the first performance was given on 16 February 1965 at University College, London, in a semi-professional production staged by the UCLU Music Society in the old Gymnasium. In 1994 was performed at the Wexford Opera Festival, in Ireland. In North America a successful revival was given in 1983, conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch. In 1990, a staged production (with reduced orchestra) was mounted in San Francisco by Pocket Opera, led by, and with an English performing translation by, Donald Pippin. A fully staged production was premiered on 19 July 2008, by Glimmerglass Opera, in a production by Nicholas Muni, at the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, New York, USA. The cast was led by Mark Schnaible as Friedrich and Claudia Waite as Isabella; Corrado Rovaris conducted. In 2009, a concert production was presented at the International Festival of Young Singers at the Kammeroper Schloss Rheinsberg plus a staged production at the Staatstheater Braunschweig in October. In 2013, 200 years after the composer's birth, it was performed in Bayreuth for the first time. A production of the Oper Leipzig was shown in the Oberfrankenhalle, a hall for sports, because Wagner had banned his early operas from the Festspielhaus. It was staged by Aron Stiehl with elements of operetta and revue; Constantin Trinks conducted the Gewandhausorchester. Since 2011 a production of this work has formed part of the repertoire of Helikon Opera Moscow. In Romania it was staged at the Cluj-Napoca Hungarian Opera (premiere 24 September 2015). In 2016 it was staged by the Teatro Real, Madrid.
Roles
Synopsis
The synopsis is Wagner's own description of his scenario, in a translation by William Ashton Ellis published in 1898.
Place: Palermo
Time: 16th century
Act 1
The town square
An unnamed King of Sicily leaves his country on a journey to Naples, as I suppose, and deputes to his appointed State-holder—called simply Friedrich, to mark him for a German—the full authority to use all royal powers in an attempt to radically reform the manners of his capital, which had become an abomination to the strait-laced minister. At the commencement of the piece we see public officers hard at work on the houses of amusement in a suburb of Palermo, closing some, demolishing others, and taking their hosts and servants into custody. The populace interferes; great riot: after a roll of the drums the chief constable Brighella (basso buffo), standing at bay, reads out the edict of the State-holder according to which these measures have been adopted to secure a better state of morals.