Der Barbier von Bagdad (The Barber of Baghdad) is a comic opera in two acts by Peter Cornelius to a German libretto by the composer, based on The Tale of the Tailor and The Barber’s Stories of his Six Brothers in A Thousand and One Nights. The first of three operas by Cornelius, the piece was first performed at the Hoftheater in Weimar on 15 December 1858.
Cornelius planned the work as a one-act comedy, but on the advice of Franz Liszt expanded i...
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Der Barbier von Bagdad (The Barber of Baghdad) is a comic opera in two acts by Peter Cornelius to a German libretto by the composer, based on The Tale of the Tailor and The Barber’s Stories of his Six Brothers in A Thousand and One Nights. The first of three operas by Cornelius, the piece was first performed at the Hoftheater in Weimar on 15 December 1858.
Cornelius planned the work as a one-act comedy, but on the advice of Franz Liszt expanded it to two. Franz Liszt later arranged the second overture for orchestra (S.352). Unlike most German comic operas of the period, which have spoken dialogue, Der Barbier von Bagdad is through composed. Cornelius offered the inventive and complex opera as an alternative to the contemporary German opera composers such as Richard Wagner, whose ideological fervor he found overwhelming.
At its first performance the opera was a failure, and it was not played again in the composer’s lifetime. The composer's mentor and friend Franz Liszt conducted the...
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