Clavigo

In the organizer's words:

If you had never risen, you would never have fallen!

As a young, penniless writer, Clavigo comes to Madrid and is readily taken in by the French sisters Marie and Sophie Beaumarchais. They help him build a successful career at the Spanish court. Marie and Clavigo fall in love and decide to become engaged. But at the height of his success, Clavigo unceremoniously separates from Marie in order to concentrate fully on his work. Marie is desperate. Her brother swears revenge and demands that Clavigo confess his guilt in order to restore his sister's honor. Intimidated, Clavigo signs, but then decides to become an honest man and ask Marie for forgiveness. He swears his love for her and the engagement is made a second time. Clavigo's friend Carlos sees the renewed engagement as a threat to his career and talks him into it. He then hatches an intrigue: he has Beaumarchais put on trial for allegedly threatening Clavigo with violence. Torn, Clavigo allows himself to be persuaded by Carlos and once again breaks his word to Marie. Her health then deteriorates dramatically and she dies of a broken heart. At her funeral, Beaumarchais stabs the once again repentant Clavigo, who, plagued by guilt and grief, reaches for Marie's hand as he dies and sees himself united with her in death.

Goethe wrote his second tragedy Clavigo, which premiered in 1774, in just eight days. It is based on the memoirs of the French playwright Beaumarchais, who demanded an admission of guilt from her unfaithful fiancé in order to save his sister's honor. In this "poetic confession", Goethe also dealt with his own betrayal of his lover Friederike Brion. The tragedy from the Sturm und Drang period addresses the cult of genius and sets the extraordinary nature of an artist's existence in conflict with the petty bourgeois order.

Introduction at 19:00