Richard Wagner | Autograph vocal part relating to Wagner's arrangement of Gluck's "Iphigénie en Aulide", 1847

Richard Wagner

Autograph manuscript of a vocal part for Patroklos relating to Wagner's arrangement of Gluck's opera Iphigénie en Aulide

a fair-copy manuscript, notated in dark brown ink on two-stave systems, the voice part and preceding cues contained on the upper stave, the instrumental bass part on the lower stave, with autograph headings and designations ("Act II. No:18. Quartett:...Recitativ...Arie...Terzett:...Recitativ...."), with autograph title-page, INSCRIBED AND INITIALLED BY WAGNER ("Iphigenia in Aulis / Patroklos / Hr. Mende. / RW")

2 pages, plus autograph title, 27.7 x 27.7cm, cut down from a larger folio bifolium, twelve staves visible on the inner pages (and part of a thirteenth on the outer ones), no place or date [Dresden, 1847], splitting slightly at head and foot of hinge, scratch mark and tiny hole to lower inner corner of first leaf, leading edges slightly trimmed, central vertical crease, browning

A REMARKABLE MANUSCRIPT UNITING THE GREAT EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY REFORMER OF OPERA AND THE CREATOR OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY OPERA DRAMA.

Wagner interrupted his work on Lohengrin in the winter of 1846/1847 to produce his celebrated German arrangement of Gluck's great 1774 French 'reformist' opera Iphigénie en Aulide. In making his revision, which received its premiere at the Dresden Hoftheater on 24 February 1847, Wagner reduced the fifty numbers in Gluck's original score (41 separate numbers in the Brissler vocal score) to thirty, mainly by excising the dance interludes not directly related to the action of the opera. Some minor roles were cut, but additions too were made, notably some 'dramatically enlivened ritornellos' between closed numbers (thereby creating extended tableaux) and the new ending to the opera which entailed the appearance of the goddess Artemis. Changes were also made to the orchestration (entered into Wagner's personal copy of the first (1774) edition of Gluck's score), principally involving the consistent use of clarinets (employed only sporadically by Gluck) and the addition of a third bassoon, a second pair of horns, a trumpet and a tam tam to the score.

The present score shows that Wagner envisaged changing the part of Patroklos from a bass role to a tenor one. In the event, however, Wagner decided to dispense with the part altogether, reassigning the music for Patroklos to other characters, namely Arkas and the Leader of the Thessalians (this tiny part probably alloted to a member of the chorus). One can only speculate as to the grounds for Wagner's change of mind here: perhaps he wished to economise by having one less person in the cast, or because the tenor chosen for the role, Louis Mende (active as a lyric baritone in Riga between 1837 and 1843 and as a singer and an actor at the Königlich Sächsisches Hoftheater in Dresden from 1846 to 1848) could not or did not want to sing it.

But the significance of Wagner's Gluck arrangement goes beyond the insights it provides into Wagner's musical stagecraft. There are, to be sure, important points of connection between Iphigenia in Aulis, to give the work its German title, and the RIng cycle - the figure of Agamemnon (given a powerful monologue by Gluck at the end of the second act), for example, providing something of a model for Wotan, father of the gods in the Ring (the latter part being written to suit the bass Anton Mitterwurzer, who had sung the part of Agamemnon in Dresden).

A vocal score of Wagner's arrangement, prepared by Hans von Bülow and overseen by Wagner, was published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1858. Although Breitkopf never published the complete score of Wagner's arrangement, the publisher did prepare a copy of the (lost) Dresden conducting score from which copies could be made for the use of other opera houses. A complete score was not published until 2010, in the modern collected edition. Wagner's annotated full score of Gluck's opera (Paris: Marchand, 1774) and his annotated vocal score of the opera (Berlin: Brissler, 1839) are preserved today in the Nationalarchiv der Richard-Wagner-Stiftung, Bayreuth (a leaf containing Wagner's new conclusion to the opera, tipped in to the Brissler score, is on paper possibly similar to that of the present manuscript).

We are pleased to acknowledge the kind assistance of Professor John Deathridge in our cataloguing of this lot.

LITERATURE:

WWV 77 Musik III (pp.330ff.); Richard Wagner. Sämtliche Werke, 20/iv (2010), p.424