Proof – if proof be needed – that vampires, like wingtips, never go out of fashion: as far back as 1828, the year of Schubert’s death (not by vampires), Heinrich Marschner’s opera “Der Vampyr” was given its premiere in Leipzig and became a sensation.
The libretto was by Marschner’s brother-in-law, Wilhelm August Wohlbrück, who adapted the 1821 play “Der Vampir oder die Totenbraut,” by Heinrich Ludwig Ritter, who in turn based it on the short novel “The Vampyre,” by John Polidori, who lifted the idea from an unfinished mood piece composed by Lord Byron.
Byron’s fragment was written in response to a night of German ghost stories shared around a fire at his Lake Geneva villa during the rainy summer of 1816, an unusually cold, dreary season, thanks to the eruption of Mount Tambora the previous year. This was the same night, by the way, which gave rise to Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” Shelley was one of Byron’s guests, along with her poet husband and Polidori, who acted as Byron’s personal physician.
Marschner’s opera is still revived on occasion, and is regarded as an important link between Carl Maria von Weber’s seminal romantic chiller, “Der Freischütz,” with its stormy night pact-with-the-devil, and Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman,” with its undead wanderer damned for his blasphemy. Wagner had conducted “Der Vampyr” in Würzburg in 1833.
Marschner’s opera capitalizes on a lurid fascination with the supernatural, with its opening Witches’ Sabbath; a proclamation by a Vampire Master that Lord Ruthven (the titular bloodsucker) must claim three virgins within 24 hours, lest he cease to exist; Lord Ruthven’s curse on the hapless Aubry that if he should reveal Ruthven’s secret, Aubry himself will become a vampire; and the spectacular conclusion involving lightning and hellfire.
Happy birthday, Heinrich Marschner! Thanks for the chills (and chuckles).
Overture to “Der Vampyr”:
A modern update of Lord Ruthven’s aria “Ha! Ha! Welche Lust!” — in English, complete with wolf and vampire teeth!
