Fierrabras at La Monnaie

For Schubert, the year 1823 was marked by illness and financial difficulties. Since a handful of new songs and the Wanderer Fantasie yielded only a meagre income, Schubert then thought that the road to success was to be found in the theatre. Joseph Kupelweiser, secretary of the Kärtnertor Theater, gave him a libretto inspired by the legends of Charlemagne and his knights, full of amorous intrigues involving the Moorish camp (Fierrabras) and the Frankish camp (Roland and Eginhard). The Kärtnertor-Theater hoped to give German theatre a new boost with this and other commissions. Unfortunately Weber’s comparable work Euryanthe flopped shortly before Schubert’s premiere and so Fierrebras was dropped. Ádám Fischer is the perfect person to guide us through the atmospheric German romanticism of Schubert the theatrical composer, and to show that it was unfair that this score remained untouched for so long.