Schubert: Opera Fragments without Titles (Zang, Orkest)

Schubert's "hapless love of the theatre" manifests itself in this highly interesting volume, which brings together and comments on those opera fragments that did not make it beyond the first draft stage. The degree to which these opera projects remained incomplete varies greatly. These fragments run through Schubert's entire compositional career, just like those stage works that, though still fragmentary, reached a more completed stage but were not performed and have been published in separate volumes in the New Schubert Edition. In the course of the preparation of this volume, drafts could be identified and titles were assigned. Included are the fragments of the opera "Wanda" (D 791, previously "Rüdiger") and "Sophie" (D 982, title hitherto unknown), which goes back to the opéra comique "Une aventure de Saint-Foix" (Paris 1802), as well as in the appendix the libretto "Der kurze Mantel" by Johann Gabriel Seidl, which was included in the edition due to its great documentary value.