Der Arzt der Sobeide (Sobeide's Doctor)
Comic opera in a prologue and two acts.
Text by Fritz Zoref, Opus 4, (1917)
Duration: full evening'
Publisher: Universal Edition (1919)
score and parts available for hire
Further Details
Der Arzt de Sobeide
Hans Gál
Comic Opera in a Prelude and 2 Acts. Libretto by Fritz Zoref.
Published by Universal Edition, Vienna, 1919, as Opus 4
Completed in 1918 while Gál was serving in the First World War, building a railway in the Carpathians.
First performance: Breslau, 2.11.1919. Conductor: Julius Prüwer. Production: Runge.
Place of action:
Prelude: A busy square near one of the city gates of old Granada.
Act 1: The house of Don Pedro
Act 2, Scene 1: A courtyard in the old town
Act 2, Scene 2: In and around a harem in a Moorish tent
Time of action:
Middle of the 16th Century
Characters:
Juan Sanchez de la Mancha (tenor)
Annita, his betrothed (soprano)
Don Pedro, doctor, her father (baritone)
Paquita, Annita’s maid (soprano)
Don Miguel de Zuelos, an adventuring hidalgo (tenor)
Lopez, his servant (bass)
Jacinto, barber-surgeon to Pedro (baritone)
Sobeide (soprano)
Zuleima, companion to Sobeide (soprano)
Fatima, companion to Sobeide (alto)
Ali, a eunuch (soprano)
Nahena, a quack dealer (alto)
A young dandy (tenor)
Another dandy, his friend (bass)
A fruit woman (alto)
First urchin (soprano)
Second urchin (alto)
Children, townsfolk, harem women, slaves, eunuchs
Orchestration:
3 flutes (3 also piccolo)
2 oboes (2 also oboe d’amore)
2 clarinets in B flat and A (1 also D-clarinet, 2 also bass clarinet)
2 bassoons (2 also contra-bassoon)
4 horns
3 trumpets
Bass tuba
Harp
Timpani
Percussion
Strings
On stage: organ or harmonium
Plot:
Set in 16th century Spain, in Granada, in a colourful, exotic world of Moors and Christian knight-adventurers, 2 love plots interwoven with intrigues, adventures, mistaken identities; a cloak and dagger drama with a whiff of the poetic atmosphere of the Arabian Nights; a burlesque romantic comedy, with stock comic situations, reminiscent of ‘Cosi’ and ‘Don Giovanni’, which comes to a climax in the Finale of the 2nd Act, starting with a love duet between the Moorish slave-girl Sobeide and the knight-adventurer Don Miguel, who has entered the harem disguised as a doctor (called to tend the ailing Sobeide), and then bringing to a head all manner of confusion as Juan also arrives at the harem disguised as a doctor, followed by the real doctor, Pedro, while Nahena, the quack dealer, who has engineered the whole plot, brings along Juan’s betrothed to compound his discomfiture.
Musically, this offers scope for extended ensembles (quintet and sextet with chorus), combining the ecstasy of the lovers with the wry admission of the losers that theirs was the ‘wrong medicine’.
Formally, the opera is structured as a sequence of strongly contrasted numbers, with a continuous progression and alternation of musical ‘scenes’. The orchestra has a predominantly accompanying function, except in 2 fairly extensive orchestral interludes (which became popular concert pieces, as did the Moorish love-song, sung by Sobeide with women’s chorus).
[cf. Waldstein, 1965: pp.22-3]