page_title: Alceste (Schweitzer)
section_title: Performance, reception, recording
hierarchical_section_title: Alceste (Schweitzer) / Performance, reception, recording
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Hoftheater in Weimar (Vorgängerbau des heutigen Deutschen Nationaltheaters); Postkarte aus dem Verlag Zedler &amp; Vogel, Darmstadt, 1899. English: 1899 postcard showing the Hoftheater in Weimar, Germany; this building has been replaced by the present German National Theater. The statue in the square is the 1857 Goethe-Schiller Memorial by Ernst Rietschel. The postcard was published by the Zedler &amp; Vogel Co. in Darmstadt.
context_page_description: Alceste is an opera in German in five acts by Anton Schweitzer with a libretto by Christoph Martin Wieland. It was commissioned by Abel Seyler for the Seylersche Schauspiel-Gesellschaft, and premiered on 28 May 1773 at the Hoftheater Weimar. Considered a milestone of German opera, it was revived in Weimar and recorded in 1999.
context_section_description: The opera was premiered by the Seyler Company on 28 May 1773 at the Hoftheater Weimar, with Franziska Romana Koch in the title role, whose voice the composer had in mind when he wrote the opera. The librettist was so pleased with her performance that he wrote a poem to her.
  Mozart wrote that "Alcestis was a great success, and that although it is not half so beautiful as [Schweitzer's] Rosamund. It is true that its success was much abetted by the fact that it was the first German opera." The opera singer, composer and musical theorist Ernst Christoph Dressler described the positive reception of the opera in Weimar in his 1774 book Gedanken Die Vorstellung Der Alceste, Ein Deutsches Ernsthaftes Singspiel (Thoughts on the Presentation of Alceste, a German Serious Opera). He considered it a model for German opera.
  The opera was revived in Weimar in 1999, when the town was European Capital of Culture. Conducted by Stephan E. Wehr, it was staged in the Richard-Wagner-Saal of the Hotel Elephant, and broadcast live by Deutschlandfunk. Ideas and Impresario was the visual artist Cornel Wachter from Cologne. The ensemble, with Ursula Targler as Alceste, Sylvia Koke as Parthenia, Christian Voigt as Admet and Christoph Johannes Wendel as Herkules, with the Philharmonisches Orchester Erfurt and its chorus recorded the opera in 2001. Another recording was made in 2008 by Concerto Köln conducted by Michael Hofstetter on period instruments, with Simone Schneider, Cyndia Sieden, Christoph Genz and Josef Wagner. The DVD recorded a performance staged by Hendrik Müller in the Festsaal (festive hall) of Schloss Weimar, on the occasion of the reopening after the fire of the Duchess Anna Amalia Library.
caption: The Hoftheater Weimar on an 1899 postcard
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