Propagating a national genre: German writers on German opera, 1798--1830

Standard histories of Western music have settled on the phrase "German Romantic opera" to characterize German operatic developments in the early part of the nineteenth century. A consideration of over 1500 opera reviews from close to thirty periodicals, however, paints a more complex picture. In addition to a fascination with the supernatural, composers were drawn to a variety of libretti, including Biblical and Classical topics, and considered the application of recitative and other conventions most historians have overlooked because of their un-German heritage. Despite the variety of approaches and conceptions of what a German opera might look like, writers from Vienna to Kassel shared a common aspiration to develop a true German opera. The new language of concert criticism found from specialized music journals like the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung to the entertainment inserts of feuilletons like the Zeitung fur die elegante Welt made the operatic endeavor of the early nineteenth century a national one rather than a regional one as it was in the eighteenth century.