Andres Felipe Losada

Afl587
MUS387L
Butler School of Music

Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient: A woman of bravery and courage

Stephen Meyer's essay is quite an interesting journey through the life of the famous German singer

Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient. His essay is practically divided into three main parts: on the one hand we

find the vocal and dramatic characteristics that she possessed and why Richard Wagner himself chose

her over other great singers of the time to premiere several of her most characteristic roles in many of

his operas. Then we find a series of criticisms and comparisons between Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient

and the famous opera singer Henriette Sontag; many of those comparisons in favor of Sontag's voice

and others in favor of Schröder-Devrient as a preference for the German nationalist opera (it is worth

mentioning that sometimes she was also often compared to the great Italian singer Giuditta Pasta).

Finally, Meyer tells us a bit about the failed marriages of Schröder-Devrient and how the last years of

her life ended moving between music and the political affairs of the 19th century.

The first big section of the essay allows us to see what were the characteristics of her as an opera singer;

it is known in advance that her artistic training was always marked by her parents since her mother was

one of the greatest actresses in Germany, while her father was a renowned baritone. From this we can

already deduce that from a very young age she had a solid artistic training, both in vocal training and in

her dramatic training. According to some criticisms of Henry Chorley, Schröder-Devrient did not have a
beautiful voice and argued that she had problems singing lyrical roles like Amina in Bellini's "La

Sonnambula"; this suggests that her voice was of a not so wide range and at the same time quite heavy

to not be able to perform the coloratures in the proper way. As a tendency of this, voices that are

usually heavy tend to have considerable power; this perhaps suggests that it made it easier for her voice

to have a great projection over the majestic orchestrations of Wagner or Beethoven. Chorley, refers to

her as a singer who, in her essence, could overcome her own vocal limitations through drama, in this

sense, we can infer that she was not talented vocally but was a great musician and at the same time an

excellent actress that allowed her to transmit to the public all the drama of the character and this could

create a more powerful connection than that of a beautiful voice, especially due to the German

nationalist sentiment that arose at the time and that preferred drama over the beauty of legato style

and "clean" singing.

Comparisons with other singers of the time begin to emerge; one of the most prominent criticisms was

that of Munich in 1836 in which Pasta was compared with Schröder-Devrient; in this the critics praise

the vocal beauty, line and musicality of Pasta and argue that Pasta is unique on stage; this reminds a bit

of the most recent criticisms of Callas in which she is praised and it is said that Callas only existed one.

On the other hand, Schröder-Devrient is praised for her drama in the scene and it was argued that to see

her on scene was seeing her incarnate the character and the public could see the veracity of the

character glimpsed.

The importance of this verisimilitude with the character has a great impact on the German public. Laube

argues that this is due to a new operatic style, outside only the vocal line, the new style had a political

and historical importance that at the time of being dramatized could reach more to the German public

than the “simplicity” of the Rossinian 'Bel Canto' or Donizetti operas that also occurred at the time.
More critical comparisons continued to emerge, especially with her compatriot Henriette Sontag. Of

Sontag they praised the flexibility of her voice, the beauty and great range of her voice (which Schröder-

Devrient did not possess). It is said that Rossini himself classified her as "the purest soprano voice he had

ever heard". However, despite these great vocal abilities, it was preferred to listen to the voice of

Schröder-Devrient on the German opera stages, since the German public was not more interested in

vocal beauty but rather wanted the music to be more emotional and deep regardless of the vocal

conditions of the singers.

Critics in favor of the German opera are said to have viewed the aesthetics of the revolution and its

political ideals as a symbol of hope for their nation. They also considered that Italian opera was quite

superficial and would never achieve nationalistic ideals like those of the German political revolution. I

quite disagree with this opinion, since it is a very closed thought to only what was lived in Germany at

the time, I believe that these critics never imagined the nationalist strength of future composers like

Giuseppe Verdi, Giacomo Puccini or Pietro Mascagni that would make Italian opera have a political

value, especially in Verdi for his ideal political commitment to the “Risorgimento” of Italian unification

carried out by Vittorio Emanuele II, hence the slogan known as “Viva Verdi”.

Returning to Schröder-Devrient, the last part of the essay focuses on her failed marriages and her

withdrawal from the German opera for political reasons. She first married the actor Karl August

Devrient, whose last name she would retain for the rest of her life. In 1847 she married David Döring,

being next to him where she would leave the stages for the first time due to political reasons; a single

year later she got divorced due to the financial crisis of the time.

In 1850 she remarried with Herr Heinrich von Bock, which caused her to leave the stages again. In

Meyer's essay it is wrongly argued that she had a happy marriage to Herr von Bock, as other sources

claim that the marriage broke up in 1852 as well (two years after they were married). In 1856 Schröder-
Devrient is seen for the last time on the stage and she dies only 4 years after that in the city of Coburg

(Bavaria - Germany), having left her artistic life a year before her death (as recital singer).

Stephen Meyer through his essay shows us a bit of the bravery and courage that Schröder-Devrient had

to face his career as an opera singer, survive criticism, preserve his radical political ideals of the time and

try to lead a celebrity life; not in vain the title of the essay is "Das Wilde Herz" for its translation into

English "The wild heart", a title that fits perfectly with the life of one of the most admired nationalist

German opera singers in history.

 Bibliography

 Meyer, Stephen C. (1997). “Das Wilde Hertz: Interpreting Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient.”, The

Opera Quarterly 14, No.2, pp. 23 – 40.