Opera and the Imagined Nation: Weber’s Der Freischütz, Schinkel’s Neues Schauspielhaus and the Politics of German National Identity
This paper looks at music theatre's role in shaping a sense of cultural identity by examining Weber's Der Freischütz and its première in Schinkel's Neues Schauspielhaus in the light of the German quest for a sense of national identity and nationhood in the early years of the nineteenth century. Following the Wars of Liberation and the establishment of the German Confederation, the possibility of a united Germany seemed more real than ever before, highly desirable to some but threatening to others. The stakeholders involved included the still-powerful aristocracy and royal families of the various regions, representatives of the high culture associated with the courts, such as Goethe for instance, and, very importantly, members of the increasingly influential but also disparate bourgeoisie. All these groups and individuals had their own view of the German nation as a utopian possibility (or impossibility), an imagined space to be negotiated and then translated into lived reality. The focus here is on Weber's opera and its première as a case study of the politics of cultural and national identity, the way place, power and participants interacted to give individuals a sense of themselves as members of a national group. The text and its performance, the event as public spectacle and the physical space of the theatre, are all examined for their contribution to the process of self-constitution of the audience, offering a confirmation of an imagined unity, but simultaneously suggesting the possibility of transgression and exclusion.
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