Schumann the innovator: Genoveva

Schumann's only opera Genoveva will be performed for the first time at the Saturday Matinee. If only he had dared to write more operas…

Medieval myth
Robert Schumann was not very lucky with his only opera Genoveva. After he himself had conducted the premiere in Leipzig in 1850, the reactions were so negative that he did not write a second opera. With the romantic German musical theatre of Weber and the early Wagner and the modern oratorios of Mendelssohn in mind, he had been inspired to write a German-national work. The myth of the eighth-century Countess Genoveva who is falsely accused of adultery, like Faust and the Nibelungen, belonged to the collective German consciousness.

Schumann the innovator
The opera is full of gems, such as the dramatic symphonic overture that could have come from one of Schumann's best symphonies. This is followed by a beautiful Bach-like chorale that gives the opera an archaic lustre. Most interesting, however, is Schumann's through-composed style, in which he effectively uses the beauty of Liedkunst to realise dramatic scenes, such as a ghost scene with a macabre mirror image. With Genoveva, Schumann ranked alongside Wagner, Liszt and Berlioz among the great innovators of nineteenth-century music.