Schwetzingen SWR Festival: Images of Women

Musically and literarily, pianist Sophie Pacini and actress Rebecca Immanuel question gender roles. In the 19th century, gender roles were still clearly defined. The woman represented worship, hope, devotion, emotional depth, subtle nuances, but also powerlessness, suffering, and glorification, ideally complementing and completing the masculine counterpart with these traits. This perspective also shapes the art of the time. It can be experienced in musical pieces and letters from the trio of Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann, and Johannes Brahms, supplemented by texts and sounds from Fanny Hensel, Abraham Mendelssohn, Cécile Chaminade, and Heinrich Heine. Franz Liszt provides the concluding point of this literary-musical retrospective: not only with two of the nocturnes he published under the title Consolations, but also with his piano arrangement of the prelude to Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser. The title character of this opera is torn between two women, who simultaneously represent two different female attitudes: here the sensual Venus, there the virtuous and reserved Elisabeth. Tannhäuser dies from his inability to choose between the two; thus, these two poles round out the program into a universe of historical female images.