Franz Von Suppe: Poet and Peasant Overture

Franz Von Suppe: Poet and Peasant Overture.

FRANZ VON SUPPE  (Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo Cavaliere Suppe Demelli)

 (b. Spalato [now Split], Apr. 18, 1819; d. Vienna, May 21, 1895)

Von Suppe was an Austrian composer of Belgian descent. He was largely Italianized, his family having lived at Cremona for two generations, but born in Dalmatia under Austrian rule. It is not certain whether his birth occurred at Spalato itself or on board a ship lying off of the coast.

His taste for music developed early. At eleven he learned the flute, at thirteen harmony, and at fifteen he produced a mass at the Franciscan church at Zara. A piece called “Der Aprel” was produced privately at Zara in 1834. His father, however, had other views for him and sent him to the University of Padua. But music asserted itself; he learned from Cigala and Ferrari, and composed incessantly. At the moment his father died, the mother settled in Vienna, where he joined her; and after some hesitation between teaching Italian, practicing medicine and following music he decided on the last, took lessons with Seyfried and obtained a gratuitous post as conductor at the Josephstadt Theatre, where he made his debut as a dramatic composer on the Vienna stage on March 5, 1841 with music for a play, “Jung lustig, im Alter traurig, oder Die Folgen der Erziehung !” This was followed by no less than 133 other pieces (i. e. music for comedies, farces, vaudevilles) produced at the Josephstadt Theatre, the Theater an der Wiell and the theatre at Baden near Vienna, all under the direction of Pokorny. This lasted until 1862. From 1865 to his death he was associated with the Leopoldstadt Theatre.

His work at these houses, though for long mere patching and adding, was excellent practice, and he gradually rose to more independent things. In 1844. a “Sommer-nachtstraum”, founded on Shakespeare and composed by Suppe, is mentioned in the A.M.Z. “Der Kramer und sein Commis” followed. In 1847 “Das Madchen vom Lande,”  produced on August 7, met with wild success at the Theater an der Wien. Oddly enough, in 1862, Suppe, a native of Spalato and descendent from a Belgian family, was proclaimed the German Offenbach — the real Offenbach being a native of Cologne. The overture to "Diehter and Bauer," still popular in Britain as "Poet and Peasant," belonged to one of these. Arranged for no less than 59 different combinations of instruments, it is by far his most familiar composition abroad, though the overture to “Leiehte Kavallerie” (1866) is perhaps as often played by British seaside bands and light orchestras nowadays. "Pique Dame" (Queen of Spades) was produced as an opera by Tchaikovsky and based on a story by Pushkin.