Byron’s Manfred – a dramatic reading

with incidental music by Robert and Clara Schumann, and Fanny Hensel-Mendelssohn

Jedidiah Wentz, declamation
Cecilia Bernardini, violin
Artem Belogurov, fortepiano
Octavie Dostaler-Lalonde, cello

Standaard €18.00
Museumkaart, stadspas, Lutheranen €15.00
Standaard studenten/ CJP / jongeren <18 jr €5.00
https://luthermuseum.nl/nl/agenda/manfred-project

Published in 1817, Byron’s Manfred was both a scandal and an overnight sensation. In verses of sublime poetry inspired by Goethe’s Faust, Byron tells the story of a doomed magician defiantly challenging the authority of both God and the devil. With Manfred, he created the model for the romantic anti-hero, the so-called ‘Byronic hero’: a daemonic, brooding and wounded character who causes physical and emotional suffering to everyone around him, while suffering even more greatly himself. Manfred’s magical powers arise from a terrible secret, from some guilty deed in his past, some act too horrible to even be named, and from the irremediable torture his soul endures because of it. No mortal or immortal being can conquer Manfred, for none is as guilty–nor has suffered as much–as he.

Throughout the 19th century, Manfred was performed in Britain and the United States of America as a one-man show. Using elaborate gestures and melodious declamation, a single actor read Byron’s verses, using his voice to create and animate all of the different characters. The intermittent musical accompaniment sometimes interrupted and sometimes coincided with the declamation, creating melodramatic moments of great intensity by uniting and contrasting music with text. Inspired by accounts of this lost performance tradition, the musicians of Postscript and historical actor Jedidiah Wentz have created a new, intimate chamber version of Manfred. The incidental music is made up of pieces by Robert and Clara Schumann interpolated into a revised and shortened version of Byron’s original English text. The score contains music from Robert Schumann’s Manfred: Dramatisches Gedicht in drei Abtheilungen arranged for piano trio, including the best-loved sections such as the Overture, Erscheinung eines Zauberbildes, Zwichenactmusik, Die Alpenfee, and Ansprache an Astarte. To these are added Robert Schumann’s Abendlied, the Fantasie in g minor by Fanny Hensel-Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann’s Romanzen op. 11 no. 2 and op. 22 no. 1, as well as the Scène Fantastique op. 5 no. 4. 

Our aim has been to highlight the most emotional scenes of the poem: the audience is invited to empathize with Manfred, to experience his torment at the death of his beloved Astarte, his scornful defiance of the authority of God and the devil, and his conviction that his sorrow, his sin and his guilt are his very essence because they give him his greatest power. To this end, we do not send Manfred to heaven in a last-minute act of divine intervention, as Robert Schumann did in his musical setting. Rather, following Byron’s original, we allow the listener to decide if Manfred has descended into eternal hell-fire, or if he has finally found the oblivion he seeks.