Schubert: Prometheus | Dresden Festival Orchestra, Ivor Bolton and René Pape (bass)

Dramatic and multifaceted are words that could be used to describe Franz Schubert’s art song "Prometheus," D 674, which is set to a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In the text, the titan Prometheus delivers a fiery and defiant monologue, rejecting the authority of Zeus and the Olympian gods.

This performance took place during the Dresden Music Festival in May 2019, when the Dresden Festival Orchestra, conducted by Ivor Bolton, performed at the Kulturpalast Dresden. The soloist is Grammy Award-winning German bass René Pape.

Composed in 1819, the song is striking for its intensity and breadth. It demonstrates how Schubert composed the music to follow the emotional text. The piano part opens forcefully, while the vocal line requires a powerful voice with a wide range as Prometheus expresses a plethora of emotions: from anger to pride to self-assertion.

At the time Schubert wrote this art song, he was in his early twenties and entering a period of artistic confidence. Although still largely unknown to the public and struggling financially, he was increasingly drawn to ambitious literary works, and was an ardent fan of Goethe. The song demonstrates how the composer wanted to expand the expressive possibilities of art song and put it on par with large-scale instrumental works.

"Prometheus" powerfully unites poetry and music to express individual rebellion and self-determination: key ideas of early Romanticism. Schubert’s setting transforms Goethe’s philosophical text into a musical drama, much like later Romantic composers like Robert Schumann and Hugo Wolf would later do.
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