Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön

"Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön" (This image is enchantingly lovely) is an aria from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 1791 opera The Magic Flute. The aria takes place in act 1, scene 1, of the opera. Prince Tamino has just been presented by the Three Ladies with an image of the princess Pamina, and falls instantly in love with her.

Lyrics

The words of "Dies Bildnis" were written by Emanuel Schikaneder, a leading man of the theater in Vienna in Mozart's time, who wrote the libretto as well as running the troupe that premiered the opera and playing the role of Papageno. There are fourteen lines of poetry, which Peter Branscombe described as "a very tolerable sonnet."[1]

Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön,
wie noch kein Auge je gesehn.
Ich fühl' es, wie dies Götterbild
mein Herz mit neuer Regung füllt.

Dies Etwas kann ich zwar nicht nennen,
doch fühl' ich's hier wie Feuer brennen;
soll die Empfindung Liebe sein?
Ja, ja, die Liebe ist's allein.

O wenn ich sie nur finden könnte!
O wenn sie doch schon vor mir stünde!
ich würde, würde, warm und rein –

Was würde ich? Ich würde sie voll Entzücken
an diesen heißen Busen drücken,
und ewig wäre sie dann mein.

This image is enchantingly lovely,
Like no eye has ever beheld!
I feel it as this divine picture,
Fills my heart with new emotion.

I cannot name my feeling,
Though I feel it burn like fire within me,
Could this feeling be love?
Yes! Yes! It is love alone!

Oh, if only I could find her,
If only she were standing before me,
I would, I would, with warmth and honor ...

What would I do? Full of rapture,
I would press her to this glowing bosom,
And then she would be mine forever!

The metre is iambic tetrameter,[2] which is the metre Schikaneder used throughout most of The Magic Flute. The stanzaic form and rhyme scheme involves two quatrains followed by two rhymed tercets, thus: [AABB] [CCDD] [EEF] [GGF].

David Freedberg offers an appreciation of Schikaneder's work: "[the aria] describes in extraordinary detail something of the mental movements that one can imagine accompanying the revelation of the picture. Tamino's heart is stirred, and then more powerfully so; he cannot name the emotion, he calls it love. Thus identified, the sentiment grows stronger; he moves from beautiful picture to the beautiful woman represented on it. Tamino is overwhelmed with a sense of her potential presence, her potential liveliness. He speaks of pressing her to his breast, and he wants to possess her forever."[3]

Music

Mozart composed the aria in E-flat major. It is scored for two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, the usual string section, and the tenor soloist.

Mozart's musical setting mostly follows the scheme of Schikaneder's poem. There is an opening section in E-flat corresponding to the first quatrain, a modulation to the dominant key of B-flat for the second quatrain, a chromatic and modulating passage for the first tercet, and a return to E-flat for the last.

The third to last line "Was würde ich? Ich würde sie voll Entzücken" is not strictly a iambic tetrameter, and may reflect a change of the text by Mozart, who places a dramatic full-measure pause after Tamino's self-directed question.

The orchestra for the most part plays a discreet accompaniment to the soloist. There is a solo for the clarinets between the first and second quatrains, and the first violins play a thirty-second note motif, evoking Tamino's surging emotions, in the third section.

The opening bars

According to Simon Keefe, the striking opening notes of the singer's part were inspired by an earlier aria, "Welch' fremde Stimme", composed by Benedikt Schack (1758–1826) for the collectively-created opera Der Stein der Weisen ("The philosopher's stone"). The resemblance is hardly likely to be accidental, since Mozart himself contributed music to the same opera, which was in the repertory of Schikaneder's company prior to The Magic Flute. Mozart and Schack were close friends,[4] and Schack was the singer who first performed "Dies Bildnis" at the premiere of The Magic Flute. Der Stein der Weisen is known to have been in many respects a rough draft for The Magic Flute (Keefe), and the device of beginning a lyric aria with "a soaring high G that immediately descends in scalar motion" might be regarded as having passed its tryout in Der Stein der Weisen.[5]

Reception

The aria is frequently performed and recorded today, both as part of The Magic Flute and separately in recitals and recorded compilations.

Criticism and commentary

Hermann Abert offered background to the work thus: it "deals with a theme familiar not only from fairytales but also from French and German comic operas, namely the love of a mere portrait, a true fairytale miracle that music alone can turn into a real-life experience."[6] Abert goes on to contrast Tamino's love with that of other male characters in Mozart opera:

Few, if any, experiences lend themselves to musical treatment as much as the mysterious burgeoning of love in a young heart. It was an experience that already preoccupied Mozart's attentions in the case of Cherubino. Now, of course, we are no longer dealing with an adolescent but with an already mature young man. Moreover, Tamino does not experience love as a state of turmoil in which all his senses are assaulted, as is the case with Count Almaviva, for example, but nor is it a magic force that paralyses all his energies, as it does with Don Ottavio. Rather, it is with reverent awe that he feels the unknown yet divine miracle burgeoning within him. From the outset, this lends his emotions a high degree of moral purity and prevents him from becoming sentimental.[6]

Grout and Williams suggest that the opening notes of "Dies Bildnis" spill over into other numbers of The Magic Flute: "The opening phrase of 'Dies Bildnis ist bezauberned schön' turns up at a half-dozen unexpected places in the second finale. These and similar melodic remembrances are not to be regarded as leitmotifs in the Wagnerian sense but as partly unconscious echoes of musical ideas that were in Mozart's mind throughout the composition of the opera."[7] They do not specify these locations but Christoph Wolff points out one of them: the phrase to which Pamina sings the words "Tamino mein! O welch ein Glück!" ("My Tamino! Oh what happiness!") when they are reunited shortly before their trials of fire and water.[8]

Though repeated elsewhere, the opening notes of "Dies Bildnis" do not recur in the aria itself. Spike Hughes writes, "That rapt opening phrase does not occur again in this aria, and so has a remarkable effect of expressing that unforgettable but unrepeatable moment of love at first sight."[9]

Notes

  1. ↑ Branscombe (1991, 50). In terms of length and stanza structure Branscombe is correct, but a rhyme scheme of paired couplets is unusual for a sonnet; see Sonnet for discussion.
  2. ↑ Branscombe (1991, 50)
  3. ↑ Freedberg (2013:unpaginated)
  4. ↑ See the online New Grove, article "Benedikt Schack" (subscription required)
  5. ↑ Keefe's discussion appears in Keefe (2003:165); the opening bars Schack's aria are quoted.
  6. 1 2 Abert, p. 1265
  7. ↑ Grout and Williams (2003:331)
  8. ↑ See Wolff (2011:126) and for location in the NMA online score . Other possible instances: Pamina earlier sings the "Dies Bildnis" motif to the Three Boys as they dissuade her from suicide; her words are "er fühlte Gegenliebe? und verbarg mir seine Triebe" ("he [Tamino] felt love in return? and hid his feelings from me"); see . While preparing for the trials of fire and water Tamino sings the motif on the words "Wir wandeln durch des Tones Macht" ("We wander by the power of the sound"); . The motif also appears in the second bar of the flute solo he plays during the trials; .
  9. ↑ Hughes (1972:201)

References

External links

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