On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    in the song and ballad , could not fail to produce a beautiful Tittle composition . Die Fischerinn—The Fisherwonoan , an opera , performed on the national theatre at Tiefurt , on the Ilm . The theatre requires notice here rather than the play . Huge buildings are erected for the purpose of adequately performing written plays ; but in this case a

    little piece was written that it might be acted on the very spot where the incident is supposed to occur . It was composed for the purpose of adorning a f § te at the country residence of the Duchessdowager Amelia of Saxe Weimar . The Ilm runs through her grounds , and a spot being selected , at a convenient distance from which the Princess and her visitors could be placed , and hear and see all that takes place , fishermen ' s huts were erected and a fire

    kindled by the river ' s side . Dotchen , the fisher-girl , is heard singing the famous ballad of the Erl-King , to wear away the time , as her lover keeps her waiting . As he does not come , she resolves to play him a trick by hiding herself , and laying her hat , &c . by the river , as if she had fallen in . When , therefore , her lover and father come , they are in a terrible fright , and immediately all the neighbours are summoned to make due search . And the

    author tells us honestly enough , in a note , that the whole effect of the show lay in the splendid illumination of the winding river and its borders . The piece terminates with an exquisite comic ballad . If a thing like this have no other merits than those of giving currency to delightful ballads , and also furnishing an historic memorial of the elegant amusements of the little court of Weimar , between forty and fifty years ago , it does not disgrace the far superior works among which it appears .

    Scherz , List , und Rache , i . e . Joke , Trick , and Revenge . —A comic opera , or rather a musical farce . It has but three persons : the Doctor , Scapin , and Scapina ; as their name imports , two knaves , who however , honestly enough , get back their own from the doctor , who is both miser , knave , and dupe to boot . Scapin is taken into the doctor ' s service , by pretending that he is suffering under the incurable disease of not being able to eat ; and

    Scapina comes to be cured also . He administers medicine to her , which , however , instead of curing seems to kill , for she shams death , and so frightens the doctor out of his wits , he believing that he had given her poison by mistake . The new man-servant offers , for half the sum they had been cheated of , to carry off the dead body ; and he having obtained his pay , she recovers ; first terrifies the

    JEsculapius as a ghost , and at last , as she still threatens to die , makes him give her the other half * in order to get rid of her ; and then , of course , they laugh at him . We presume it had no success , from the way in which Goethe speaks of it in his diary . He says that it cost him more labour than it merited ; and remarks that the impudent trick by which a miserly pedant was taken in had no charms for an honest German , while Italians and

    Untitled Article

    686 Goethe ' s Work * .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1832, page 686, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1822/page/36/