Important first printing of "Lohengrin" restored
One of the few copies of the first print of "Lohengrin" from the estate of conductor Theodor Hlouschek, who died in 2010, ended up in the University Archive / Thuringian State Music Archive in Weimar, where the opera was premiered. There, however, it first had to be saved from decay.
Originally, Richard Wagner's opera was to be premiered in Dresden, but the composer, who was wanted on a warrant, had to flee the city in 1849. His friend Franz Liszt, court conductor in Weimar, stepped in: 163 years ago, on August 28, 1850, the romantic opera was performed for the first time at the court theater. Only two years later, the three-volume score was printed in a small edition: it is still rare today.
At the request of the new Weimar musicology professor Christiane Wiesenfeldt, the Sparkassen-Kulturstiftung Hessen-Thüringen and the Sparkassenstiftung Weimar-Weimarer Land agreed to make the restoration of the score possible with a total of 4800 euros. In addition, the chairman of the Weimar Wagner Society, Eberhard Lüdde, supported the project with a donation. The restored score will be presented to the public for the first time on the occasion of the Lohengrin premiere on September 7, 2013 at the Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar.
The Landesmusikarchiv also acquired a handwritten piano transcription of Lohengrin "for piano alone" by Conrad Götze, who was Grand Ducal music director in Weimar from 1826. This autograph is very similar to a piano reduction of Lohengrin, which was published shortly after the premiere of the opera in Weimar under the name of Theodor Uhlig,
