Biography
One of mid-19th-century Germany’s more prosperous composers of opera, Friedrich von Flotow remained a regular presence on stages well into the 20th century. Italian opera and French opéra comique left unmistakable marks on his style. Born into an aristocratic household, the future musician saw his father, a captain in the Prussian hussars, initially map out a diplomatic or civil-service path for him, only to abandon those plans once the boy’s musical gifts surfaced. At the Paris Conservatory he pursued piano and composition studies; residence in the French capital also brought him into contact with the operas of Rossini, Meyerbeer, Donizetti, and Adam, all of which shaped his own writing. During those years he forged lasting friendships with Gounod and Offenbach.
Flotow’s earliest opera, Pierre et Catherine, completed in the 1830s, drew on the same historical episode that Albert Lortzing later used for Zar und Zimmermann, though Flotow’s version proved far less durable. Recognition in Paris remained elusive throughout most of the decade until Le Naufrage de la Méduse earned more than fifty performances; after the score was lost in a fire, the composer reconstructed the work as Die Matrosen for its Hamburg premiere. Another early piece, Lady Harriette, enjoyed the distinction of being conducted at its first performance by Franz Liszt. The mid-1840s brought his greatest triumphs: Alessandro Stradella in 1844 and, three years afterward, his most lasting achievement, Martha (1847). Although several subsequent operas achieved modest success into the 1850s and beyond, none matched Martha’s popularity either in Germany or internationally.
Personal misfortune and upheaval followed Martha’s premiere. Flotow’s first wife died in 1851 while giving birth to their son, who survived only weeks. Two years later he wed a twenty-year-old dancer; the union produced two children before ending in divorce in 1867, when the dancer was thirty-six. Barely a year afterward he married her twenty-year-old sister.
Martha remains the work by which Flotow is chiefly remembered. From the late 1840s through the middle of the 20th century it enjoyed continuous performances, its appeal to both popular and operatic audiences strengthened by the effective incorporation of the traditional Irish melody “The Last Rose of Summer.” Enrico Caruso made the role of Lyonel—rendered in Italian—his own and turned the aria “M’apparì” (originally “Ach so fromm”) into a signature piece of his repertoire. The melody became so widely recognized that it appeared in a 1930s Popeye cartoon, voiced by Pinto Colvig, best known as the voice of Goofy, in a sequence that blended operetta with slapstick. Although Martha has receded from the German repertory since the mid-20th century, partly because its light romantic tone contrasts with the works of Wagner and Weber, the aria continues to serve as standard material for tenors more than a century and a half after its composition. Five recordings of the opera survive, among them a 1944 Berlin performance and stagings from the late 1970s.
Flotow’s earliest opera, Pierre et Catherine, completed in the 1830s, drew on the same historical episode that Albert Lortzing later used for Zar und Zimmermann, though Flotow’s version proved far less durable. Recognition in Paris remained elusive throughout most of the decade until Le Naufrage de la Méduse earned more than fifty performances; after the score was lost in a fire, the composer reconstructed the work as Die Matrosen for its Hamburg premiere. Another early piece, Lady Harriette, enjoyed the distinction of being conducted at its first performance by Franz Liszt. The mid-1840s brought his greatest triumphs: Alessandro Stradella in 1844 and, three years afterward, his most lasting achievement, Martha (1847). Although several subsequent operas achieved modest success into the 1850s and beyond, none matched Martha’s popularity either in Germany or internationally.
Personal misfortune and upheaval followed Martha’s premiere. Flotow’s first wife died in 1851 while giving birth to their son, who survived only weeks. Two years later he wed a twenty-year-old dancer; the union produced two children before ending in divorce in 1867, when the dancer was thirty-six. Barely a year afterward he married her twenty-year-old sister.
Martha remains the work by which Flotow is chiefly remembered. From the late 1840s through the middle of the 20th century it enjoyed continuous performances, its appeal to both popular and operatic audiences strengthened by the effective incorporation of the traditional Irish melody “The Last Rose of Summer.” Enrico Caruso made the role of Lyonel—rendered in Italian—his own and turned the aria “M’apparì” (originally “Ach so fromm”) into a signature piece of his repertoire. The melody became so widely recognized that it appeared in a 1930s Popeye cartoon, voiced by Pinto Colvig, best known as the voice of Goofy, in a sequence that blended operetta with slapstick. Although Martha has receded from the German repertory since the mid-20th century, partly because its light romantic tone contrasts with the works of Wagner and Weber, the aria continues to serve as standard material for tenors more than a century and a half after its composition. Five recordings of the opera survive, among them a 1944 Berlin performance and stagings from the late 1970s.