excerpt from 'A Memoir of Baron Bunsen Volume II' pp. 59-60 (258 words)
excerpt from 'A Memoir of Baron Bunsen Volume II' pp. 59-60 (258 words)
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The King never having read the Greek tragedies in the original, or in a German translation, had only taken in an idea of them through the systematising phrases of his tutor Ancillon, and thus was enraptured, as with a new and splendid discovery, when Tieck, in one of his evenings of poetical reading at the Palace, chose for his subject the ' Antigone ' of Sophocles, as translated by Bockh. The delight which the King experienced, he knew not how to give vent to more royally than by expressing a desire to see the tragedy completely performed, the success of which, on the Berlin stage, with the splendid compositions of Mendelssohn, was considerable, and yet not such as to silence the opposition of a critical and gainsaying public, which, instead of beholding in the performance the gratification of artistic taste on the part of the King, was resolved to believe in a design to regulate or school the general taste by authority. At a later period, the 'Oedipus at Colonos ' (the Choruses by Taubert) was performed with good effect, and by the desire of the King, under Bunsen's direction, the great works of Aeschylus (the 'Agamemnon,' the 'Eu menides,' the 'Choephorae') were compressed by Professor Franz into one piece, called the ' Oresteia.' It was hoped that Mendelssohn would have undertaken the arrangement and musical composition of the Choruses, but after much consideration, for reasons indicated in the second volume of his published correspondence, he was obliged to leave the royal wish unfulfilled.' |
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