Book Launch, Friday, April 10
Location: Netherlands Music Institute Concert Hall/OBDH, Spui 68, The Hague
Time: 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM
Program to follow shortly.
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Publihsed in 2026, the first part of the 401DutchOperas anthology has been in the making for more than fourteen years. It is based on source research in partner organization the Netherlands Music Institute, the Royal Collections and other collections, as well as the 401DutchOperas archive in which all audio and audio-visual documents of Dutch operas from the past 120 (!) years have been brought together. Indeed, from 1901, when the very first records emerged in the Netherlands. The most important audiovisual pillar under the book is the 401Concerts series, in which highlights of almost all works from this first volume on Dutch baroque opera have been performed and recorded. Highlights of many of the completely unknown works from the anthology can be listened to directly on the CDs and downloads accompanying the book.
Contents of the book
Pages: 544+
Price: € 40
Language: Dutch
Hardcover: Hardcover with dust wrapping
Luxurious edition: the handbook is luxuriously printed on beautiful silk-mat paper, richly illustrated and beautifully designed by design eater Lilian van de Zande.
1. Chronological overview of Dutch opera composers from the early days (Sweelinck, incidental music, Vondel/Padbrué, Constantijn Huygens and publisher Andries Pels) to the Amsterdam Liedschool 1687-1715 (Hacquart/Buysero, David Petersen, Hendrik Anders, Johannes Schenck), the first half of the 18th century (Quirinus van Blankenburg, Willem de Fesch, Zingoni), the Dutch operas from the periods of Stadtholder Willem V (Jacob Jan van Wassenaer Obdam, Josina van Boetzelaer, Baron Gottfried van Swieten, Belle van Zuylen, Bartholomeus Ruloffs, Jean- André Colizzi, Johann Meissner, Johannes Just, the Mulligen brothers, Baron Gottfried van Swieten and Mozart, whose first opera experiment started in The Hague is made public) and the French Period (with Bartholomeus Ruloffs, Jean des Communes and Ludwig van Beethoven, whose story is being investigated that he was born not in Bonn but in Zutphen).
2. A biographical sketch is made for each composer, followed by the brief contents of operas by his or her hand, of which at least one fragment of music has been preserved. This is concluded with a discussion of the work and a full discography.
3. Timeline: chronological overview of all operas composed from 1594-1814, including the many operas whose music was lost in successive theater fires or otherwise.
A readable book
The handbook is based on scientific research, but written in an accessible way with the sole aim of making these composers and operas accessible to the widest possible audience. In the Netherlands, in the field of opera, both masterpieces have been composed and groundbreaking works, such as Justs The Merchant of Smyrna, a protest against slavery wrapped in music. Wassenaer Obdam's adaptation of Belle van Zuylen's novel Le noble caused a stir and his 'secret' first free mason opera, Les nôces de Vénus, was an astonishing paean to military libertinism. In the 18th century, the Netherlands had much more artistic freedom than the neighboring countries.
Pioneering work
The handbook refutes the notion that nothing of value has been composed in the Netherlands in the field of opera in four centuries of music history. The opposite is true. The Netherlands was one of the first countries outside Italy to embrace opera, and where homegrown operas based on Dutch texts have been experimented with since 1644. Contemporary audiences are also more curious than average about historical works from their own country. For example, performances of Camerata Trajectina's 'De Triomfeerende Min' (The triumphant Wet-Nurse') in Utrecht in 2012 and Jan van Gilse's opera 'Tijl' at Soesterberg Air Base in 2017 were completely sold out. According to Pierre Audi, the biggest obstacle was that opera houses and organizations, including his own DNO at the time, were unwilling to take on the production challenges posed by pre-war Dutch manuscript scores. With the exception of the 401DutchOperas Foundation, no opera institution in the Netherlands has a heritage objective. For them, there is nothing commercially to be gained from the enormous effort required to make Dutch manuscript scores playable. Average public attendance is much easier to achieve with a ready-to-play, copyright-free score of the usual 18th/19th-century opera suspects. In the 21st century, only Camerata Trajectina and 401NederlandseOperas have, over a period of years, managed to stage performances like the recent world premiere of Beethoven's 'Vestas Feuer' in a reconstruction by Cees Nieuwenhuizen.
Beethoven, Mozart & Haydn in the 401DutchOperas Anthology?
The alleged Zutphen birth of Beethoven led to a wonderful Beethoven Festival there, which celebrates the composer with a smile as a 'Zutphenaar'. Seghers: 'In the 401DutchOperas handbook, I traced that theory back to the sources and listed all the pros, cons, and missing links. The reader may draw their own conclusions. In any case, Beethoven wouldn't be Dutch if he happened to be born at a Zutphen fair in 1772. In that case, Poet Laureate Vondel (from Cologne) would, in turn, have to be called a German author. However, during my research, I became fascinated by the almost forgotten Vestas Feuer torso when I discovered that numerous unexplored sketches existed beyond the familiar first scene. I found a kindred spirit in the Dutch Beethoven specialist Cees Nieuwenhuizen, who adapted the torso and sketches for us into a historical performance score." Regardless of Beethoven's exact birthplace, Nieuwenhuizen's performance score makes our reconstruction of Vestas Feuer a German-Dutch work that occupies a place in its own right in the 401 Dutch Opera Handbook.
Even more astonishing is that Mozart appears to have worked on his first opera, Artaserse, in The Hague, with a libretto by Metastasio. Haydn composed Die Schöpfung and Die Jahreszeiten (The Creation and the Seasons) commissioned, based on texts and musical instructions from Leiden baron Gottfried van Swieten, who also produced the world premieres. Larger countries than the Netherlands would document such a thing in statues and history books. In the 18th century, the Netherlands' role in the classical music industry was considerably more significant than that of painting. At that time, Dutch opera composers successfully spread their wings to France (the Haarlem brothers Mulligen/Moulinghen), England (Willem de Fesch) and the beginning of Europe (Van Swieten, who himself composed operas and symphonies, initiated the Bach revival and took Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn and C.P.E. Bach under his wing).
Objective
Because there are no recordings of 99% of the more than 400 pre-war Dutch operas, interested readers would never be able to hear a single note of all those Dutch operas in the anthology. That is why 401DutchOperas started organizing concerts in 2015 in which highlights from all kinds of Dutch operas are performed and recorded. The concert recordings have the direct purpose of being published in CD editions, downloads and in the books themselves. The 'Vestas Feuer' recording will be released alongside our Amsterdam Lied School concert 1674-1714, excerpts from operas by Johan Michel Mulligen's 'Acajou' and Jean des Communes' 'Het dorp in het gebergte' (The Village in the Mountains), and excerpts from operas by Van Swieten, Just, Zingoni, Meissner, and Jacob Jan van Wassenaer Obdam, all in conjunction with the 401NederlandseOperas book Part 1. This means that at least one excerpt of virtually every title in the book is now available as a sound recording.
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