Marschner, Heinrich August

Marschner, Heinrich August

Marschner, Heinrich August (1795–1861)

Heinrich August Marschner, the author of the first vampire opera, was born on August 16, 1795, in Zittau, Germany. He manifested an early talent for music but left home at eighteen to pursue law at the University at Leipzig. Fortunately, one of his professors recognized his true talents and convinced him to drop out of law. Marschner moved to Vienna, where he met Beethoven and wrote his first operas. In 1823 he became music director at the opera house at Dresden.

Four years later he moved back to Leipzig. By the time of his return to Leipzig, the vampire had become an item of fascination for French artists and that interest was being felt in Germany. Thus, in 1828, while in Leipzig, Marschner wrote his opera Der Vampyr. The finished piece was a collaborative product. The libretto was written by Wilhelm August Wohlbrück, Marschner’s brother-in-law. It was based on Charles Nodier‘s very successful stage play that had first brought the vampire to Parisian theater audiences. Nodier’s work was in turn based on John Polidori‘s “The Vampyre”. The opera opened with a gathering of witches. Lord Ruthven appeared and was told that he had twenty-four hours to locate three victims. Janthe, the first of his three victims-to-be, soon arrived, and she and the vampire departed into the vampire’s cave where he killed her. Janthe’s father then killed Ruthven, but he was revived when his friend Aubry placed him in the moonlight. (Moonlight, a theme introduced by Polidori, was retained in the nineteenth-century works based on “The Vampyre,” but disappeared from the twentieth-century lore.)

The next scene was the home of Malwina, the young woman with whom Aubry was in love. They were prevented from consummating their love, however, as Malwina’s father had promised his daughter to the Earl of Marsden—that is, Ruthven. Aubry could not expose Ruthven because he had taken an oath never to reveal Ruthven’s vampiric condition. On his way to the wedding, Ruthven located his third victim, Emmy, the daughter of a peasant. After killing Emmy he headed for another needed feeding. Unable to prevent the wedding by his best arguments, Aubry finally broke his oath and revealed Ruthven’s true nature.

Cosmic forces took over, and Ruthven was struck by lightning and fell into the pits of hell. The opera ended with the wedding guests singing a closing song thanking God.

Der Vampyr opened in Leipzig on March 29, 1829. The opera was a great success and was taken on the road. It opened in London in August and ran for some sixty performances at the Lyceum Theater, the same theater that later played such a central role in Bram Stoker‘s career and the site of the original dramatization of Dracula. In 1831 Marschner continued his career at Hanover, where he wrote his most critically acclaimed work, Hans Heiling. In 1859 he was pensioned as Hanover’s general music director. He died two years later on December 14, 1861. The town erected a monument to him in 1877.

Der Vampyr has been revived only rarely since the 1820s; however, in 1992 the BBC sponsored a modern production of it. The new production, entitled Der Vampyr—A Soap Opera, utilized Marschner’s music but had a completely new libretto written by Charles Hart that transferred the setting to modern London. Lord Ruthven became Ripley the Vampyr. (His part was sung by Omar Ebrahim.) The outline of the old plot survived, however, and Ripley, after several bloody scenes that would satisfy any vampire enthusiast, received his just reward in the presence of the wedding guests. The new version of Der Vampyr has been released on a Virgin Classics compact disc.

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Marschner, Heinrich August