Erwin und Elmire
Music by Johann André
Erwin und Elmire is a singspiel, described as a Schauspiel mit Gesang, in two acts by the German composer Johann André, with a libretto by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, after Oliver Goldsmith's ballad of Angelica and Edwin, The Hermit, in chapter 8 of his sentimental novel The Vicar of Wakefield. André was the first to set Goethe's text in 1775, but he was closely followed by Anna Amalia of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel whose own Erwin und Elmire was performed in 1776. Versions followed by Carl David Stegmann (Hamburg, 1776), Ernst Wilhelm Wolf (Weimar, 1785) and Karl Christian Agthe (Ballenstedt, 1785), also Johann Friedrich Reichardt (concert performance, Berlin, 1793) who based his work on a later revised text by Goethe. Othmar Schoeck's songs and incidental music to the play premiered in 1916.
Text from the Wikipedia article "Erwin und Elmire (André)", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
About the Composer
Johann André (28 March 1741 – 18 June 1799) was a German musician, composer and music publisher of the Classical period. He was born and died in Offenbach am Main. In 1774, as the patriarch of a Huguenot family, André founded one of the first music publishing houses to be independent of a bookshop, in Offenbach am Main. Among his closest friends in Offenbach were Goethe, at the time of his engagement to Anna Elisabeth Schönemann, and he is pictured in the seventeenth book of Goethe's autobiography Dichtung und Wahrheit with an Offenbach am Main background in 1775. In 1777, André was appointed musical director at the German theatre in Berlin, the Deutsches Theater, without having to abandon…
Text from the Wikipedia article "Johann André", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.