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THEATRICAL TIDBITS OF EMANUEL SCHIKANEDER
I KNEW the name Schikaneder only vaguely: librettist of Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute and also a bit character in the Mozart biopic of sorts, Amadeus (Director’s Cut)
Papageno: Emanuel Schikaneder: Man of the Theater in Mozart’s Time (Amadeus), by Kurt Honolka, translated by Jane Mary Wilde, Amadeus Press, 1969.
Honolka took on quite a research challenge in Papageno because very little correspondence exists concerning his subject. He suggests two reasons for this paucity: Schikaneder began his career in the early 1770s as an itinerant actor whose traveling life didn’t promote extra baggage of any kind. Later, he and Mozart were pals and lived near one another. Hence their interactions had little need of written correspondence.
Mummers, actors were called; traveling players known originally for their mime performances. The term grew to become a derogatory one for those who trod the stage, never a particularly respected profession. Honokla observes, “Their social standing was as low as their artistic level, characterized by the oft-quoted cry, ‘Take down the wash! The mummers are coming.’ ”
Emanuel Schikaneder, né Johann Joseph Schickeneder, 1751 – 1812, German impresario, dramatist, actor, librettist. After a copper engraving by Philipp Richter. This and other images from Papageno.
In time, Schikaneder achieved plaudits, for example, for his portrayal of Hamlet at Munich’s Royal Bavarian Court Theater, December 19, 1777. Plays of Shakespeare and Frenchman Molière were more highly regarded in royal venues than German farce and Singspiel. Not that today’s theatergoers would recognize this particular Hamlet: Subtitled Brudermord Gerächt (Fratricide Revenged), the play in which Schikaneder starred had been revised to have a happy ending.
Honolka shares another Schikaneder/Hamlet tale, also leading to a happy conclusion: At a performance of the play in Linz, Germany, “ ‘The lights were lit, the orchestra was ready, but not a soul was in the house.’ Schikaneder ordered ‘a roast chicken for each player’ to be sent from the White Cross Inn. A table was set up on the stage, the orchestra was ordered to play, and all dined in good spirits. He threw open the theater doors with great ostentation. When the Linz townspeople peered in cautiously, they were given to understand: here’s the Hamlet that nobody wanted to see!”
The next performance, townspeople filled the theater to capacity.
Playing to royals had its quirks too. Frederick II had commissioned Berlin’s Unter den Linden opera house in 1741. Operas in Italian were the hot tip. Indeed, it was not unknown in such court theaters for the princely patron to take part on stage or in the orchestra pit, a choice role, of course.
Audiences were seated strictly according to rank and title. Also, Honolka notes, “… when it was too cold (there was no heating) a company of grenadiers was assigned to provide adequate bodily warmth.”
No grenadiers were evident to me in the 1990s when I enjoyed a production of Bellini’s Norma at Unter den Linden opera house. Today, this theater is under renovation with the Staatsoper residing in Berlin’s Schiller Theater.
Playbill from the first performance of The Magic Flute, the Theater auf der Wieden, in a Vienna suburb, September 30, 1791.
Schikaneder’s troupe played Salzburg in the fall of 1780, and he and Wolfgang Amadeus hit it off. Later, when Schikaneder’s troupe was the resident theatrical company in Vienna, Mozart’s Die Entfürhrung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio) was one of its popular productions. Briefly, its plot has two romantic pairs, one high-born, the other of the servant class, both with adversities to overcome. It’s a familiar theme; think numerous episodes of Downton Abbey.
The Papageno Gate of the Theater an der Wien, Vienna.
Or think of The Magic Flute, with Prince Tamino and his Pamina, Papageno and his Papagena, the bird catcher played by none other than Emanuel Schikaneder. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2016
Simanaitis Says 
Saw the mummers once at the Santa Fe Opera . . stage opened on the back side to a black starry New Mexican sky . . out floated the Queen of the Night singing one of the most beautiful arias in all of opera.
Whoever wrote the words, Mozart wrote the beauty!