Origin and Performance History of Carl Maria Von Weber's Das Waldmädchen (1800)

Carl Maria von Weber's (1786–1826) early opera Das Waldmädchen (J. Anh. 1, 1800) was considered a lost work until a complete score and set of orchestral parts was discovered at the central library of the Mariinsky State Theater in St. Petersburg in 2000. Although Weber's music has survived, little else is known about the work's librettist or the opera's subject matter and performance history. This study examines the historical and cultural context from which Weber's opera emerged, establishing the composer's musical background and knowledge of popular German opera at the time of his collaboration with librettist and theater company director Karl Franz Guolfinger, Ritter von Steinsberg (c. 1757–1806). Das Waldmädchen is of particular interest as Weber's first professionally produced stage work, and also as the original version of his more mature opera, Silvana (J. 87, 1808–10). It was composed when Weber was thirteen years old. This study shows that Steinsberg, Weber's talented Czech-born librettist and the original producer of the opera, was the Director of the German company at Prague's Nostitz Theater (Estates Theater) in 1798, a position Weber himself held from 1813–16. Steinsberg's libretto to Das Waldmädchen was modeled after a popular Viennese pantomime ballet by Paul Wranitzky (Das Waldmädchen, 1796), a ballet inspired by contemporary reports of feral children. Musical and dramatic aspects of Weber's opera score are compared to Wranitzky's ballet score, highlighting similarities in both works and demonstrating how some of the musical conventions of Viennese pantomime ballet found their way into Weber's music for the German opera stage. The migratory path of the Waldmädchen story as a ballet and an opera is traced from Vienna to Prague and beyond by consulting theater playbills, calendars, and other extant records, and charting the movements of theater-company personnel involved in various productions. The careers of several of the original cast members of Das Waldmädchen are described, and evidence is offered to support Weber's claim that his early opera was performed at Prague in Czech, a claim previously doubted by scholars.