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  • Two Operas from the Series Die zween Anton. Part 1: Der dumme Gärtner aus dem Gebürge oder Die zween Anton (Vienna, 1789) ed. by David J. Buch, and: Two Operas from the Series Die zween Anton. Part 2: Die verdeckten Sachen (Vienna, 1789) ed. by David J. Buch
  • Adam Shoaff
Two Operas from the Series Die zween Anton. Part 1: Der dumme Gärtner aus dem Gebürge oder Die zween Anton (Vienna, 1789). Edited by David J. Buch. (Recent Researches in the Music of the Classical Era, 96.) Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2015. [Contents, p. v–vi; abbrevs. and sigla, p. vii–viii; acknowledgments, p. ix; introd., p. xi–xviii; text and translation, p. xix–lxi; plates, p. lxii–lxv; cast and instruments, p. 2; score, p. 3–195; crit. report, p. 197–203; appendix, p. 205–16. ISBN-13 978-0-89579-811-4. $270.] [End Page 595]
Two Operas from the Series Die zween Anton. Part 2: Die verdeckten Sachen (Vienna, 1789). Edited by David J. Buch. (Recent Researches in the Music of the Classical Era, 98.) Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2016. [Contents, p. v–vi; abbrevs. and sigla, p. vii; acknowledgments, p. viii; in-trod., p. ix–xii; text and translation, p. xiii–lxiii; plates, p. lxiv–lxvi; cast and instruments, p. 2; score, p. 3–299; crit. report, p. 301–6; appendix, p. 309–36. ISBN-13 978-0-89579-824-4. $360.]

A principal focus for eighteenth-century musicological studies in recent decades has been exploring the various contexts in which the canonic composers lived and worked. Naturally, Vienna has received considerable attention. Many of these studies have concentrated on opera buffa, and thanks to the efforts of scholars such as Daniel Heartz, Mary Hunter, John Platoff, James Webster, and others, we now have a broad base of knowledge for understanding the genre. Examinations of Vienna’s German-language operatic productions have not been as numerous, and the amount of published critical editions and recordings lags behind as well. The current state of affairs makes David Buch’s latest opera publications for A-R Editions all the more welcome. Buch has been a key contributor to this avenue of scholarship with his research on Mozart’s German operas and the German-language works of Mozart’s contemporaries. Buch has also been active as an editor of this repertoire, and several of his projects have already been published in the Recent Researches in the Music of the Classical Era series: Der Stein der Weisen (vol. 76), Der wohltätige Derwisch (vol. 81), Der Spiegel von Arkadian (vols. 93–94), and the Liedersammlung für Kinder und Kinderfreunde am Clavier (vol. 95). His latest efforts in this vein are the first two operas from the series Die zween Anton.

The “Two Antons” franchise may be unknown to opera-goers today, but it achieved an intense level of popularity in Vienna in the late eighteenth century, such that the July 1789 original inspired six sequels in rapid succession by January 1795. In fact, the first four operas in the sequence premiered within a span of only eleven months. Performances reached nearly every theater in the German-speaking lands, and versions even appeared in Czech translation before the series waned in popularity and disappeared from theater records early in the next century. The remarkable success of the original opera in the series, Der dumme Gärtner aus dem Gebürge oder Die zween Anton, brought its librettist, Emanuel Schikaneder, to the attention of Vienna’s theatrical world, and paved the way for his later collaborations with Mozart, who noted in a 1790 letter to his wife, Constanze, his pleasure with “the Antons.” (Mozart also based his last set of piano variations, K. 613, on “Ein Weib ist das herrlichste Ding auf der Welt,” a popular aria from the second opera in the series, Die verdeckten Sachen.)

For the music, Schikaneder relied on a team of composers. This composition-by-committee approach reflected the realities of Vienna’s competitive operatic world: with multiple theaters in the city performing opera, it was important to turn out a steady supply of popular works and quickly...

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