Der Vampyr
(The Vampire)

Heinrich August Marschner, (1795-1861).
Grosse romantiche Opera in two acts. 1828.
Libretto by Wilhelm August Wohlbrück, after the story by John Polidori and Byron's Fragment of a Novel, with plays based on these.
First performance at the Stadtheater, Leipzig, on 29th March 1828.

Lord Ruthven, a newly recruited vampire, must find three young brides to sacrifice before midnight the next day, if he is to have a year's reprieve before eternal damnation. He sucks the blood of Janthe, daughter of Sir John Berkley, who vainly tries to kill him. Ruthven is helped to revive in the eerie monlight by his former friend Aubry, who realises that Ruthven is a vampire. Aubry is in love with Malwina Davenant, whose father intends her for the Earl of Marsden, who turns out to be Lord Ruthven. Aubry is in a dilemma, since he has sworn to keep secret the fact that Ruthven is a vampire. Ruthven finds his second young bride in Emmy, who is marrying George, a Davenant servant. George finds Emmy dead and shoots the vampire. As midnight approaches, Ruthven is to marry Malwina, but Aubry takes courage and reveals Ruthven's identity. The vampire is taken down to Hell, and Aubry and Malwina are united in marriage.

Marschner's opera, which has had television presentation as a modernised, serial thriller, follows Weber's Der Freischütz (The Marksman), in spite of its foreign setting. In particular there is a chance to show an eerie moonlight scene of melodrama, as Ruthven recovers, a parallel to the Wolf's Glen scene in Weber's opera, and comparison may be drawn between Weber's Agathe and Marschner's Malwina. There are elements of the melodramatic in Ruthven's gloating Ha! Welche Lust (Ha! How delightful) and in the machinations of a character without redeeming features.