Opera at the Court of Frederick the Great:  Graun's Montezuma as Royal Autobiography

Expansion of a colloquium talk at Princeton University (October 2009), University of Pittsburgh (5 February 2010), and University of Iowa (May 2010); updated April 2014

For a PDF of this paper, go to Academia. edu

Historians and biographers who like to psychoanalyze celebrated figures of the past will find no more fascinating subject than Frederick the Great. He embodied many of the contradictions of his age. He subscribed to many of the Enlightenment's ideals, such as religious toleration, but he ruled with an iron fist and used his army as his principal tool of foreign relations. He loved French literature and Italian opera, but never traveled to France or Italy. He disliked to speak or write in German (preferring French), but worked throughout his reign to increase the strength and size of his German-speaking kingdom. He was a fine musician, yet with few exceptions he played only music by his teacher Quantz and himself. He married, but he lived apart from his wife, had no children, and preferred the company of men.

     Frederick’s father and mother can help to explain his contradictory personality. King Frederick William was obsessed with military affairs. He spent his leisure in hunting and carousing at his "Tobacco College," a kind of club where he and his military officers drank and smoked. He had little interest in art or music, but hypocritically professed a pious brand of Calvinism. Uncouth, cruel, and unable to control his anger, he was hated and feared by a wife who could not appreciate his achievements in increasing Prussia's wealth and military power and felt cheated of the luxuries and pleasures to which she considered herself entitled as queen.

      Between King Frederick William and Queen Sophie Dorothea were their children, their psychological development at the mercy of paternal brutality and the toxic parental struggle into which they were born. The two oldest children, Wilhelmina and Frederick, found solace in music. He took up the flute and Wilhelmina the lute. He called his instrument "Principessa" (Princess) and she called hers "Principe" (Prince)—pet names suggesting the depth of the emotional needs that music satisfied in both of them. In her memoirs Wilhelmina explained: “My brother had given this name [Principessa] to his flute, observing that he never should be truly in love with any princess but this.” Wilhelmina later became Margravine of Bayreuth, where she built a gorgeous theater that still stands: an affirmation of everything her father despised. Frederick studied keyboard and figured bass from the age of seven. He also found emotional sustenance, as a teenager, in passionate friendships with other boys.

    Frederick's same-sex friendships, love of music and the other arts, passion for fine clothes and other luxuries, and lack of interest in religion enraged his father, who wanted to mold the crown-prince in his own image. The king reprimanded his son for "unmanly, lascivious, female occupations, highly unsuited to a man," and hoped that a stint in the army would cure him. Frederick Wilhelm's brutality, which included beatings, reached a point where, in 1730, his son decided to flee to England with two army friends, one of whom, Hans Hermann von Katte, was probably his lover. He and Lieutenant Katte were arrested for desertion and thrown into prison. Frederick wrote forlornly to his sister: “I wish … we may see those happy days when your Principe and my Principessa will sweetly harmonize.” 

    But worse was yet to come. A court martial under the king’s control sentenced Frederick and Katte to death. The king spared his son’s life, but forced him to watch the execution of his friend. Wilhelmina recounted the event very dramatically in her memoirs—as if it were a scene from an opera. As Katte ascended the scaffold, 

my unfortunate brother was… forced to stand at the window. He attempted to throw himself out of it; but was prevented. “I intreat you, for heaven’s sake,” said the prince to those around him, “delay the execution; I shall inform the king that I am ready to renounce my right to the crown, if his majesty will pardon Katte.” M. de Munchow stopped the prince’s mouth with a handkerchief. When the prince saw Katte, he exclaimed: “How wretched I am, my dear Katte! I am the cause of your death. Would to heaven I were in your place!”—“Ah!” replied Katte, “if I had a thousand lives, I would sacrifice them all for your royal highness.” At the same time he dropped on his knees. One of his servants attempted to blindfold him, but he would not suffer it, and elevating his thoughts to heaven, he cried out: “My God! I commit my soul into thy hands!” Scarcely had he pronounced these words, when his head, cut off at one blow, rolled at his feet. The trunk, in its fall, extended its arms towards the window where my brother had been; but he was there no longer: he had fainted away, and the gentlemen about him had laid him on his bed, where he remained senseless for some hours.

The execution of Hans Hermann von Katte

    After about a year in prison and house arrest, Frederick persuaded his father to pardon him; he reentered the army, reluctantly agreed to marry, and learned to use discretion as a way of staying out of trouble. At the death of his father in 1740 he became king. He ruled for forty-six years, but he never forgot the traumatic events of 1730. In his emotional life, as in his musical taste, he did not progress much beyond them. Those events probably contributed more than anything else to the strange, contradictory person he was.

    With his marriage, Frederick received permission from his father to set up his own household. Avoiding the normal marital business of starting a biological family, he fathered a musical family instead: a group of men only, mostly a little older than himself, with musical tastes that matched his, or at least with a willingness to adapt their style of composition and performance to his tastes. Carl Heinrich Graun served as the prince's maestro di cappella from 1735. Johann Joachim Quantz, a flutist and composer at the court of Dresden, came twice a year to give Frederick lessons. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, one of the few musicians younger than Frederick himself, occasionally played keyboard in the prince's ensemble from 1738, when he was twenty-four years old. 

    Immediately on becoming king in 1740 Frederick began expanding his musical “family” into two quite separate establishments, which would remain in place throughout his reign. He founded an Italian opera company, under the direction of Graun. The royal chamber ensemble, consisting largely of the musicians who had played with Frederick before he became king, assembled daily whenever he was present at one of his palaces in Berlin or the nearby town of Potsdam, where he lived most of the time. Frederick persuaded Quantz to leave his position in Dresden for good and come to Berlin to direct the chamber ensemble. 

    The music that gave young Prince Frederick pleasure and comfort during his emotionally bruising teenage years was the galant music of the 1720s and 1730s; he remained as loyal to that musical style as he remained loyal to his wooden Principessa. The galant predominates in the music Frederick played, whether of his own composition or by Quantz. 

    Among Frederick’s first actions as king was to commission his court architect Georg von Knobelsdorf to build a great new theater and to send his maestro di cappella Graun to Italy to engage singers for a new opera troupe. During the first fifteen years of his reign he gave opera the same intense attention that he gave to playing the flute, building up his army, and leading it in the field. He supervised the engagement of singers, the preparation of librettos (in several cases preparing a draft of the libretto himself in French, which his theater poet used as the basis for an Italian libretto), rehearsals, scenery and costumes. “The king,” wrote Burney, “always stands behind the maestro di capella, in sight of the score, which he frequently looks at, and indeed performs the part of the director-general here, as much as of generalissimo in field.” 

    The Royal Theater opened in December 1742. Unlike the most eighteenth-century theaters that formed part of larger buildings, this magnificent edifice stood alone, in front of a large square. With the inscription that crowned the façade, Frederick took full credit for the building: FREDERICUS REX APPOLINI ET MUSIS ([dedicated by] King Frederick to Apollo and the Muses). But with the performances that took place within the theater, he shared the spotlight with his mother, whose birthday each year was celebrated by one of the operas. Thus he allowed Sophie Dorothea the royal pleasures her husband (Frederick’s brutal father) had denied her. (But Frederick dedicated no operas to his own wife, whom he avoided as much as possible.) The opera season generally ran from November to March, with two performances a week. The repertory consisted entirely of opera seria.

    Graun composed almost all the new operas for Frederick, who depended so completely on him for operatic compositions because Graun gave him what he wanted: dramatic music in the style to which he had become accustomed as a child and a young man, in other words, the galant style as cultivated, above all, by Hasse in the 1720s and 1730s. Graun, moreover, was willing to work with Frederick, to incorporate the king's musical suggestions, to rewrite or replace arias, even (in a few cases) to replace his own arias with those written by the king. Many of Graun’s operas are settings of librettos closely based on French plays and librettos, reflecting Frederick's interest in and knowledge of French literature. The king fought against his contemporaries’ love of happy endings; several the operas written under his supervision end tragically. 

    Montezuma, first performed in the Royal Theater in January 1755, is among the finest and most interesting of Frederick’s operas. Neither the first nor the last opera to depict Hernando Cortés's conquest of Mexico, Montezuma presents a particularly striking interpretation of the events. Frederick's theater poet Giampietro Tagliazucchi based the libretto on a sketch by the king in French prose, which he in turn based in part on Voltaire's play Alzire and on a Spanish history of the conquest that had been published in French translation. From these sources Frederick derived a dramatic framework onto which he projected his own ideas—especially ideas about religion—and his own family history. 

    One current of Enlightenment thought to which Frederick was particularly susceptible was hostility toward the more dogmatic and intolerant aspects of Christianity. He saw the story of Cortés and Montezuma, as an opportunity to depict Christianity in an unfavorable light: as a system of belief used only to steal and to enslave. More than a year before Montezuma reached the stage the king wrote to a friend in Italy: “I chose the subject and now I am working it out. You realize, I'm sure, that my sympathies are with Montezuma. Cortés will be the tyrant and consequently one can let fly, in music as well, some jibes against the barbarity of the Christian religion. But I forget you are now in the land of the Inquisition, and ask your pardon, hoping to see you again in a heretic land where even opera can serve to reform morals and destroy superstitions.” 

    One of the scenes that puts Christianity on trial is the one in the one in which Cortes, having tricked his way into Montezuma’s fortress, threatens to arrest the king of the Aztecs. 

Cortes:

Più che di far conquiste,                                      More than to make conquests,                  Cerchiam di farvi noto il nostro Dio,                  we seek to make our God known to you,            E stabilir fra voi quella perfetta                          and to establish among you that perfect           Religion, che a questo Nume è accetta.            religion that is accepted by this God. 

Montezuma: 

Ah, qual idea potrò formar d’un Nume,            What idea can I form of a god 

Che il delitto t’impone?                                         who forces you to commit crimes? 

D’una religion, che ti costringe                           Of a religion, that causes you 

A detestar ogn’altro, che l’ignori,                        to hate everyone who does not know it, 

O che a’ tuoi non accordi i suoi pensieri?          or whose thoughts to not accord with yours? 

Che le perfidie meco usate alfine                       Who approves of the perfidies 

Legitmar può in te?                                               with which you have treated me? 

Cortes: 

Degno non sei                                                       You are not worthy 

Di conoscere questa                                             of knowing this religion 

Religion, che oltraggi.                                           that you have insulted. 

Montezuma: 

E sì. La nostra                                                       Yet ours is completely 

Santa e perfetta appieno. Ella c’impone          holy and perfect. It commands us 

D’amare e di servire ogni mortale;                   to love and to serve every mortal; 

C’insegna a compatir chiunque pensa             it teaches us to tolerate those 

Altrimenti da noi: ci vuol ripieni                        who think differently from us; it 

Di verace virtude, e ci dipinge                           encourages us to be full of true virtue, 

Col più nero colore                                              and paints in the blackest colors 

Del reo delitto l’empietà, l’orrore.                     the impiety and horror of crime. 

Qual differenza! … ah, barbaro nemico!         What a difference! Barbarous enemy! 

Cortes: 

Cessa omai d’insultarmi, e ti conforma            Cease your insults, and conform 

Al tuo stato presente. Co’ tuoi numi                 to your present state. Along with your 

È già distrutto l’empio culto indegno:               gods, your wicked, miserable religious is 

Più monarca non sei: finito è il regno.              destroyed. You are no longer a monarch; 

                                                                                 your reign is finished. 

And at the end of the opera, after he has defeated the Astecs, Cortes’s last words: 

Deh, qual rabbia ostinata!                                  What obstinate rage! 

Per soggiogare questo popol fiero                     To subjugate this fierce people, 

Distruggerlo convien.                                          we must destroy them. 

Sia la cittade in preda de’ soldati,                      Let the soldiers pillage the city, 

E gli abitanti tutti trucidati.                                 and let all the inhabitants be killed. 

Valorosi spagnuoli, su, correte,                           Brave Spaniards, run, 

E nel sangue immergete                                     and soak idolatry 

Degli idolatri rei l’idolatria.                                 in the blood of the idolaters. 

Lo stabilir per sempre in questi lidi                  You are expected to establish for ever 

Del nostro Re l’impero, e il far vendetta            on these shores the rule of our king, and 

Oggi del nostro culto a voi s’aspetta.                 to exact vengeance on behalf of our religion.                                                                                                                                                             

    Frederick's use of opera to convey anti-Christian propaganda was truly a revolutionary act in an age in which censors worked zealously (in most of Europe) to keep the slightest hint of Christianity—not to mention anti-Christianity—out of opera. 

    Frederick did not call attention to another aspect of his libretto: the extent to which its central dramatic conflict recalls the terrible conflict of his own childhood, when Frederick’s father had tried to impose Calvinism on his son, imprisoned him, and ordered the execution of his closest friend. In the opera’s tragic ending the king could relive the terrible events of 1730. Using violence, trickery, and Christian cant, the “tyrant” Cortés imposes his will on the peace-loving, noble, and virtuous Montezuma. At the end of the opera, in a scene of which we will hear a performance in a few moments, the Aztec king is led off in chains to be executed, while his beautiful bride Eupaforice stabs herself to death. Montezuma faces death with the same bravery and equanimity as Lieutenant Katte. Eupaforice’s subsequent monologue, leading up to her suicide, expresses the same kind of hatred toward Cortes that Frederick felt towards his father. 

    Montezuma reflects Frederick’s musical tastes as well as his ideas and personal history. The king’s love of the treble register gave rise here to a choice of soloists consisting almost entirely of sopranos and altos. Although five of the opera's seven characters are male, there is not a single bass and only one tenor in the cast, and that tenor portrays a secondary character, Tezeuco. In other Montezuma operas of the eighteenth century, Cortes, as secondo uomo, is almost always portrayed by a tenor; Frederick’s Cortes is a soprano.

    Until quite recently the original cast of Montezuma was unknown. However, a document displayed in the exhibition "Friedrichs Montezuma: Macht und Sinne in der preußischen Hofoper" (Berlin, 2012) and published in facsimile on the exhibition's website allows us to reconstruct the cast. A list of costumes made for the opera includes the names of the singers, who consisted of four musici, two women, and one tenor. Giovanni Cinzio Tedeschi, a musico who sang under the stage name Amadori, and whose tenure in Berlin lasted only about a year, created the role of Montezuma. Giovanna Astrua portrayed Eupaforice. Antonio Huber (also spelled Uber), a musico known as Porporino, sang Cortes. The tenor Antonio Romani sang Tezeuco; the musico Paulo Bedeschi, known as Paulino, sang Pilpatoe; the musico Carlo Martinengo sang Narves; and Maria Giovanna Gasparini sang Erissena. 

Transcription:

Montezuma—Janvier 1755

1 Montezuma=habit Mexicain de drap d'or garny des plumes         Amadori

    rouges, blanches, et noires, la broderie en argent, orné des

    perles, et des pierreries. Un baudrier de velour, noir. Un 

    casque de meme avec des perles, et des pierreries.

2 Cortés=habit Espagnol de velour noir brodé en or — Curiasse     Porporino

    de satin noir a paillets d'accier, le Manteau de velour noir

    brodé en or, le chapeau, et baudrier de velour noir garnys 

    des pierreries.

3 Tezeuco=habit Mexicain de satin aurore brodé en argent, et         Romani

    garny des plumes. Le Manteau de satin bleu foncé garny des

    plumes et brodé en argent. Le baudrier de velour noir le 

    tout orné des plumes et pierreries.

4 Pilpatoé=habit Mexicain de drap d'argent brodé en or, et             Pavolino

    garny des plumes, le Manteau de satin bleu celeste, le 

    baudrier de velour noir le tout orné des plumes, et 

    pierreries.

5 Narves=habit Espagnol de satin ponceau brodé en argent,         Martinengo

    le Manteau de meme, la cuirasse de drap d'argent en

    paillets d'accier, chapeau et baudrier de velour noir ornés 

    des pierreries. 

6 Eupaforice=habit Mexicain de satin marin de meme que             Astrua

    la mante richement garny en argent avec 2. corps un de

    satin noir, l'autre de satin vert garny des pierreries.

7 Erissena=habit mexicain de satin bleu de roi, la Mante de          Gasparini

    meme brodé en argent, et de gaze d'argent claire, le

    corps de meme satin orné des perles, et pierreries.

    Frederick encouraged Graun to make most of the opera’s arias much shorter than the normal da-capo arias of the time. Instead of the A-B-A structure of the da-capo aria (in which the A-section is usually binary form), most of the arias in Montezuma consist of single movements in binary form—the equivalent of the A section by itself. This kind of aria, known as a cavatina, was not new, but an opera consisting mostly of cavatinas did constitute something of an innovation. Yet even in claiming credit for this innovation Frederick characteristically explained it with reference to his musical idol: “As for cavatinas, I have seen some by Hasse that are infinitely prettier than [da-capo] arias, and quickly performed.” Even as he named a master of the da capo aria, he contributed to its gradual abandonment. 

    The mixture of innovation and tradition that characterizes Montezuma can be admired in Eupaforice's aria “Barbaro che mi sei,” in which she angrily attacks Cortes in response to his proposal of marriage. The aria begins with an idea shamelessly lifted from Hasse's celebrated da capo aria “Pallido il sole”; the vocal part begins with a rising melodic line is accompanied by the chromatic descent in the bass, reaching a climax in an augmented-sixth chord. You have the first two pages of Graun’s aria in the handout; his vocal line and accompaniment, after the initial exclamation “Barbaro!” follows Hasse’s almost exactly. But, although clearly indebted to “Pallido il sole,” Graun’s aria as a whole is quite different. With hardly any repetition of text, Graun depicted Eupaforice's rapidly changing emotions (rage against Cortés, tenderness for Montezuma) with an alternation of fast music in duple meter and slow music in triple meter. 

    The opera’s final act offers several examples of Graun’s creative responses to Frederick's darkly tragic vision, and to the king’s desire to avoid the da-capo aria. Graun wove recitative, aria, and duet into a musical fabric that carries the action inexorably forward. The act begins with a prison scene. Montezuma, alone, expresses despair and resignation in a very long orchestrally accompanied recitative and an aria, “Ah, d'inflessibil sorte,” accompanied by pizzicato strings. The aria ends on a half cadence, as Montezuma hears the sound of the prison gate opening. It is Eupaforice, and the two royal lovers sing a ravishing duet.

Karl Friedrich Fechhelm, Prison scene, possibly depicting the set for the beginning of act 3 of Graun's Montezuma 

    Just before being taken away to be killed, the king tells Cortés, in the aria “Sì, corona i tuoi trofei” that he will face death without fear. An Allegro in F minor modulates to Ab major, the relative major, and cadences in that key, leading us to expect a conventional movement in binary form, in which the second part would return to F minor. But instead the Allegro ends in C minor, and is followed by music in a completely different tempo in which Montezuma bids farewell to Eupaforice. Only in this Adagio does Graun return to the tonic. The final vocal cadence leads directly to a second orchestrally accompanied recitative. Eupaforice, seeing Montezuma being taken to his death by Spanish soldiers, expresses her anguish in a long and tumultuous monologue that ends with her suicide. Here, in Montezuma’s aria and Eupaforice’s recitative, the opera’s hero and heroine both meet death in an impressive musical tableau that lasts about eight minutes. 

    Only at the very end of the opera did Graun and Frederick lose their nerve, leaving us with one final contradiction to think about. The tragic chorus of Aztecs (“Oh Cielo! Ahi giorno orribile, di delitti esecrabili” “Oh heaven! Alas, what a horrible day of damnable crimes”) is set to music that is ridiculously bright and cheerful. Graun, in composing the chorus in this style, and Frederick, in allowing Graun's music to stand, gave in to their century's strong preference for happy endings. Whatever role Frederick’s personal demons played in the making of Montezuma, the king must have recognized that its primary function—like that of any opera seria—was the celebration of Carnival. The music with which Montezuma ends acknowledges the primacy of that celebratory function. 

    More than a month before the first performance of Montezuma Frederick wrote proudly to his beloved sister Wilhelmina: “I have heard the rehearsal of Montezuma, at which I directed the actors as to the sense of the drama. I believe this opera would give you pleasure. Graun has created a masterpiece.” The king was right. In Montezuma Frederician opera reached its zenith. Graun, Tagliazucchi, and the king produced a musical drama quite unlike those performed in the other European cities that cultivated opera seria. Montezuma vividly reflects Frederick’s enigmatic personality and the unique musical culture he created in Berlin. 

For further discussion of Graun's Montezuma, see Pierpaolo Polzonetti, Italian Opera in the Age of the American Revolution (Cambridge, 2011), 107–132