Overture: Genoveva, Op.81

Unlike most pieces of its kind, which have traditionally been put together at the last minute or even later, the Overture to Schumann’s Genoveva was written before the opera was even started. As soon as the composer had decided on Friedrich Hebbel’s play as the subject of what was to be his one and only opera, he sat down to sketch the Overture, which took him no more than three days to do. He then got to work on the text and - in spite of a variety of problems, including those associated with integrating elements from an earlier Genoveva play by Ludwig Tieck into the Hebbel version - he more or less completed the libretto by the end of 1847, eight months after he had conceived the project. But instead of going straight on to set the text to music, as any other composer might have done, Schumann turned his attention first to orchestrating the Overture.

So the Genoveva Overture, which was first performed at the Leipzig Gewandhaus in February 1850, three months before the opera itself, is no ordinary overture. While it has themes in common with the opera, their meaning is not the always same in the different contexts. The Overture is not so much an introduction to the characters and events of Genoveva as a symphonic parallel to the emotional progression of the plot - from the misery visited on Genoveva by false accusations of infidelity to her Crusader husband to the joy of their reconciliation.

It begins with a slow introduction in C minor presented for the most part as a lamenting recitative for first violins. But it also offers a hint of salvation in a short lyrical phrase which is taken up by a clarinet immediately after the first entry of the violins and which is later passed round woodwind and lower strings. The agitated theme introduced by first violins as the pace changes to the urgent main tempo of the piece is as bleak as the recitative. At a stage as early as the second subject, however, on the magical entry of the four horns with an E flat major fanfare incorporating the lyrical phrase from the introduction, there is a distinct change of atmosphere. After that, whatever happens in the development and in the first part of the recapitulation, the happy ending is scarcely in doubt - as the horn fanfare, now in C major, and the jubilant coda duly confirm.

Although, incidentally, the ending of the opera itself is not as effective as that of the Overture, a recent production by Opera North has conclusively demonstrated that Genoveva can no longer be written off as a hopelessly undramatic lost cause.