To Örebro University

For some decades now, reading The Tempest has meant engaging in colonial discourse and post-colonial debate (Greenblatt 1976; Brown 1985; Vaughan 1988; Skura 1989; Willis 1989; Wilkes 1995; Brotton 1998; Wells 2001; Loomba 2002; Ridge 2016). Earlier, the play was traditionally given an idealistic interpretation. However, there have been times when The Tempest was used as a vehicle for quite different purposes. In this paper I show how, in late eighteenth century German lands, it was adapted for the opera stage, advocating a novel nationalistic worldview. 

This German interest in The Tempest, which actually led to a number of opera libretti and settings, has been explained as founded in the play’s fantastic qualities, making it suitable to answer a growing demand for romantic adventure following the success of Mozart’s The Magic Flute (Bauman 1985). Although relevant, I believe that the engagement with nationalism is just as important. At the time, this issue had been fiercely debated in German journals (Vazsonyi 1999), and above all Johann Gottfried Herder’s writings on the subject was influencing the intellectual climate. 

Looking at Johann Friedrich Reichardt’s 1798 setting of Friedrich Wilhelm Gotter’s Die Geisterinsel libretto, I show how nationalism becomes the ideal presented in the play, as well as the lesson Prospero has to learn before he can return to Milan as rightful Duke. This is partly achieved by alterations in characters and plot, but also through the medium of national opera, which at the time provided a sense of inclusive national community in the theatre. Discussing Herder’s advocating Shakespeare as preferable to the dominating neo-classical theatre doctrines, I further show how this view supports also his ideas on nationalism, and therefore makes Shakespeare’s plays suitable as nationalistic models.