Friederike

”Why did you kiss my heart awake?” (Warum hast du mich wach geküsst?”) from Frederica

Although it is set in Germany in the time of that country’s greatest poet, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and was first performed in Berlin in 1928, Frederica takes us back to Vienna, where it had its second production, at the Johann Strauss Theatre, a year later. Richard Tauber was in the leading role on both occasions. It is based, very loosely, on a real-life episode experienced by Goethe when, as a young man, he was in love with Friederike Brion, a daughter of the pastor of Sesenheim. In the operetta the affair comes to an end when she, realising that their relationship could be harmful to his career, apparently rejects him.    “Why did you kiss my heart awake?” she sings to herself – the pathos of her situation emphasised by poignant scoring for woodwind and strings – when she has made her noble, self-sacrificing decision.