1.
1894 in art
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February – Oscar Wildes play Salome is first published in English, with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley. April – The Yellow Book begins publication by John Lane and Elkin Mathews – The Bodley Head in London, june 5 – Opening of Racławice Panorama in Lwów. August 23 – Jack Butler Yeats marries fellow artist Mary Cottenham White, the Della Robbia Pottery is established as part of the Arts and Crafts movement by Harold Rathbone and Conrad Dressler in Birkenhead, England. Lucien Pissarro sets up the Eragny Press in England, bernard Berenson publishes The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance, with an Index to their Works
2.
Carl Nielsen
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Carl August Nielsen was a Danish musician, conductor and violinist, widely recognized as his countrys most prominent composer. Brought up by poor but musically talented parents on the island of Funen and he initially played in a military band before attending the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen from 1884 until December 1886. He premiered his Op.1, Suite for Strings, in 1888, in 1916, he took a post teaching at the Royal Academy and continued to work there until his death. Although his symphonies, concertos and choral music are now internationally acclaimed, Nielsens career and personal life were marked by many difficulties, often reflected in his music. The works he composed between 1897 and 1904 are sometimes ascribed to his period, resulting mainly from a turbulent marriage with the sculptor Anne Marie Brodersen. Nielsen is especially noted for his six symphonies, his Wind Quintet and his concertos for violin, flute, in Denmark, his opera Maskarade and many of his songs have become an integral part of the national heritage. Nielsens sixth and final symphony, Sinfonia semplice, was written in 1924–25 and he died from a heart attack six years later, and is buried in Vestre Cemetery, Copenhagen. Nielsen maintained the reputation of an outsider during his lifetime, both in his own country and internationally and it was only later that his works firmly entered the international repertoire, accelerating in popularity from the 1960s through Leonard Bernstein and others. In Denmark, Nielsens reputation was sealed in 2006 when three of his compositions were listed by the Ministry of Culture amongst the twelve greatest pieces of Danish music, for many years, he appeared on the Danish hundred-kroner banknote. The Carl Nielsen Museum in Odense documents his life and that of his wife, Nielsen was born the seventh of twelve children to a poor peasant family in 1865 at Nørre Lyndelse near Sortelung, south of Odense on the island of Funen. His father, Niels Jørgensen, was a painter and traditional musician who, with his abilities as a fiddler. Nielsen described his childhood in his autobiography Min Fynske Barndom and his mother, whom he recalls singing folk songs during his childhood, came from a well-to-do family of sea captains while one of his half-uncles, Hans Andersen, was a talented musician. He had received the instrument from his mother when he was six and he learned the violin and piano as a child and wrote his earliest compositions at the age of eight or nine, a lullaby, now lost, and a polka which the composer mentioned in his autobiography. After learning to play instruments, on 1 November 1879 he became a bugler. Nielsen did not give up the violin during his time with the battalion, in 1881, Nielsen began to take his violin playing more seriously, studying privately under Carl Larsen, the sexton at Odense Cathedral. Following an introduction to Niels W and he also studied composition under Gade, whom he liked as a friend but not for his music. Contacts with fellow students and cultured families in Copenhagen, some of whom would become lifelong friends, the patchy education resulting from his country background left Nielsen insatiably curious about the arts, philosophy and aesthetics. But, in the opinion of the musicologist David Fanning, it left him with a highly personal
3.
Copenhagen
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Copenhagen, Danish, København, Latin, Hafnia) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark. Copenhagen has an population of 1,280,371. The Copenhagen metropolitan area has just over 2 million inhabitants, the city is situated on the eastern coast of the island of Zealand, another small portion of the city is located on Amager, and is separated from Malmö, Sweden, by the strait of Øresund. The Øresund Bridge connects the two cities by rail and road, originally a Viking fishing village founded in the 10th century, Copenhagen became the capital of Denmark in the early 15th century. Beginning in the 17th century it consolidated its position as a centre of power with its institutions, defences. After suffering from the effects of plague and fire in the 18th century and this included construction of the prestigious district of Frederiksstaden and founding of such cultural institutions as the Royal Theatre and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Later, following the Second World War, the Finger Plan fostered the development of housing, since the turn of the 21st century, Copenhagen has seen strong urban and cultural development, facilitated by investment in its institutions and infrastructure. The city is the cultural, economic and governmental centre of Denmark, Copenhagens economy has seen rapid developments in the service sector, especially through initiatives in information technology, pharmaceuticals and clean technology. Since the completion of the Øresund Bridge, Copenhagen has become integrated with the Swedish province of Scania and its largest city, Malmö. With a number of connecting the various districts, the cityscape is characterized by parks, promenades. Copenhagen is home to the University of Copenhagen, the Technical University of Denmark, the University of Copenhagen, founded in 1479, is the oldest university in Denmark. Copenhagen is home to the FC København and Brøndby football clubs, the annual Copenhagen Marathon was established in 1980. Copenhagen is one of the most bicycle-friendly cities in the world, the Copenhagen Metro serves central Copenhagen while the Copenhagen S-train network connects central Copenhagen to its outlying boroughs. Serving roughly 2 million passengers a month, Copenhagen Airport, Kastrup, is the largest airport in the Nordic countries, the name of the city reflects its origin as a harbour and a place of commerce. The original designation, from which the contemporary Danish name derives, was Køpmannæhafn, meaning merchants harbour, the literal English translation would be Chapmans haven. The English name for the city was adapted from its Low German name, the abbreviations Kbh. or Kbhvn are often used in Danish for København, and kbh. for københavnsk. The chemical element hafnium is named for Copenhagen, where it was discovered, the bacterium Hafnia is also named after Copenhagen, Vagn Møller of the State Serum Institute in Copenhagen named it in 1954. Excavations in Pilestræde have also led to the discovery of a well from the late 12th century, the remains of an ancient church, with graves dating to the 11th century, have been unearthed near where Strøget meets Rådhuspladsen
4.
Jules Massenet
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Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet was a French composer of the Romantic era best known for his operas, of which he wrote more than thirty. The two most frequently staged are Manon and Werther and he also composed oratorios, ballets, orchestral works, incidental music, piano pieces, songs and other music. While still a schoolboy, Massenet was admitted to Frances principal music college, there he studied under Ambroise Thomas, whom he greatly admired. After winning the top musical prize, the Prix de Rome, in 1863, he composed prolifically in many genres. Massenet had a sense of the theatre and of what would succeed with the Parisian public. Despite some miscalculations, he produced a series of successes that made him the composer of opera in France in the late 19th. Like many prominent French composers of the period, Massenet became a professor at the Conservatoire and he taught composition there from 1878 until 1896, when he resigned after the death of the director, Ambroise Thomas. Among his students were Gustave Charpentier, Ernest Chausson, Reynaldo Hahn, by the time of his death, Massenet was regarded by many critics as old-fashioned and unadventurous although his two best-known operas remained popular in France and abroad. After a few decades of neglect, his works began to be favourably reassessed during the mid-20th century, Massenet was born at Montaud, then an outlying hamlet and now a part of the city of Saint-Étienne, in the Loire. He was the youngest of the four children of Alexis Massenet and his second wife Eléonore-Adelaïde née Royer de Marancour, Massenet senior was a prosperous ironmonger, his wife was a talented amateur musician who gave Jules his first piano lessons. By early 1848 the family had moved to Paris, where settled in a flat in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Massenet was educated at the Lycée Saint-Louis and, from either 1851 or 1853 and his biographer Demar Irvine dates the audition and admission as January 1853. Both sources agree that Massenet continued his education at the lycée in tandem with his musical studies. At the Conservatoire Massenet studied solfège with Augustin Savard and the piano with François Laurent and he pursued his studies, with modest distinction, until the beginning of 1855, when family concerns disrupted his education. Alexis Massenets health was poor, and on advice he moved from Paris to Chambéry in the south of France. On his return he lodged with relations in Montmartre and resumed his studies, the familys finances were no longer comfortable, and to support himself Massenet took private piano students and played as a percussionist in theatre orchestras. His work in the pit gave him a good working knowledge of the operas of Gounod and other composers, classic. He gained some work as a piano accompanist, in the course of which he met Wagner who, in 1861 Massenets music was published for the first time, the Grande Fantasie de Concert sur le Pardon de Ploërmel de Meyerbeer, a virtuoso piano work in nine sections
5.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
6.
Claude Debussy
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Achille-Claude Debussy, known since the 1890s as Claude-Achille Debussy or Claude Debussy, was a French composer. He and Maurice Ravel were the most prominent figures associated with Impressionist music and he was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1903. He was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Debussys music is noted for its sensory content and frequent usage of nontraditional tonalities. The prominent French literary style of his period was known as Symbolism, Debussy, the oldest of five children, was born Achille-Claude Debussy on 22 August 1862 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France. His father, Manuel-Achille Debussy, owned a shop there, his mother. The family moved to Paris in 1867, but in 1870 Debussys pregnant mother fled with Claude to his aunts home in Cannes to escape the Franco-Prussian War. At the age of seven, he began lessons with an Italian violinist in his early 40s named Jean Cerutti. In 1871 he drew the attention of Marie Mauté de Fleurville, Debussy always believed her, although there is no independent evidence to support her claim. His talents soon became evident, and in 1872, at age ten, Debussy entered the Paris Conservatoire and he also became a lifelong friend of fellow student and distinguished pianist Isidor Philipp. After Debussys death, many pianists sought Philipps advice on playing his works, Debussy was experimental from the outset, favouring dissonances and intervals that were not taught at the Academy. Like Georges Bizet, he was a brilliant pianist and a sight reader. However, Debussy never once won a competition, and his personal opinion on competitions are that it is rather. The rules are taught in places called Conservatories, Art Schools, the contests, preceded by strict training, take place once a year and the umpires of the game are members of the institute —Monsieur Croche. The pieces he played in public at this time included sonata movements by Beethoven, Schumann and Weber,2, a movement from the Piano Concerto No. 1, and the Allegro de concert, during the summers of 1880,1881, and 1882, he accompanied Nadezhda von Meck, the wealthy patroness of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, as she travelled with her family in Europe. Despite von Mecks closeness to Tchaikovsky, the Russian master appears to have had effect on Debussy. In September 1880 she sent his Danse bohémienne for Tchaikovskys perusal, a month later Tchaikovsky wrote back to her, It is a pretty piece. Not a single idea is expressed fully, the form is terribly shriveled, Debussy did not publish the piece, and the manuscript remained in the von Meck family, it was eventually sold to B
7.
Enrico Caruso
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Enrico Caruso was an Italian operatic tenor. He sang to acclaim at the major opera houses of Europe. Caruso also made approximately 260 commercially released recordings from 1902 to 1920, all of these recordings, which span most of his stage career, remain available today on CDs and as downloads and digital streams. Enrico Caruso came from a poor but not destitute background, born in Naples in the Via San Giovannello agli Ottocalli 7 on 25 February 1873, he was baptised the next day in the adjacent Church of San Giovanni e Paolo. His parents originally came from Piedimonte dAlife in the Province of Benevento, in the Province of Caserta in Campania, called Errico in accordance with the Neapolitan language, he would later adopt the formal Italian version of his given name, Enrico. This change came at the suggestion of a singing teacher, Caruso was the third of seven children and one of only three to survive infancy. There is a story of Carusos parents having had 21 children,18 of whom died in infancy. However, on the basis of research, biographers Pierre Key, Francis Robinson. Caruso himself and his brother Giovanni may have been the source of the exaggerated number, Carusos widow Dorothy also included the story in a memoir that she wrote about her husband. She quotes the tenor, speaking of his mother, Anna Caruso, twenty boys and one girl – too many. Carusos father, Marcellino, was a mechanic and foundry worker, initially, Marcellino thought his son should adopt the same trade, and at the age of 11, the boy was apprenticed to a mechanical engineer who constructed public water fountains. Caruso later worked alongside his father at the Meuricoffre factory in Naples, at his mothers insistence, he also attended school for a time, receiving a basic education under the tutelage of a local priest. He learned to write in a script and studied technical draftsmanship. During this period he sang in his church choir, and his voice showed enough promise for him to contemplate a career in music. Caruso was encouraged in his musical ambitions by his mother. To raise cash for his family, he work as a street singer in Naples. Aged 18, he used the fees he had earned by singing at an Italian resort to buy his first pair of new shoes and his progress as a paid entertainer was interrupted, however, by 45 days of compulsory military service. He completed this in 1894, resuming his voice lessons upon discharge from the army
8.
Phonograph
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The phonograph is a device invented in 1877 for the mechanical recording and reproduction of sound. In its later forms it is called a gramophone. To recreate the sound, the surface is rotated while a playback stylus traces the groove and is therefore vibrated by it. In later electric phonographs, the motions of the stylus are converted into an electrical signal by a transducer. The phonograph was invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison, while other inventors had produced devices that could record sounds, Edisons phonograph was the first to be able to reproduce the recorded sound. His phonograph originally recorded sound onto a sheet wrapped around a rotating cylinder. A stylus responding to sound vibrations produced an up and down or hill-and-dale groove in the foil, in the 1890s, Emile Berliner initiated the transition from phonograph cylinders to flat discs with a spiral groove running from the periphery to near the center. Later improvements through the years included modifications to the turntable and its system, the stylus or needle. The disc phonograph record was the dominant audio recording format throughout most of the 20th century, from the mid-1980s on, phonograph use on a standard record player declined sharply because of the rise of the cassette tape, compact disc and other digital recording formats. Records are still a favorite format for some audiophiles and DJs, vinyl records are still used by some DJs and musicians in their concert performances. Musicians continue to release their recordings on vinyl records, the original recordings of musicians are sometimes re-issued on vinyl. Usage of terminology is not uniform across the English-speaking world, in more modern usage, the playback device is often called a turntable, record player, or record changer. When used in conjunction with a mixer as part of a DJ setup, the term phonograph was derived from the Greek words φωνή and γραφή. The similar related terms gramophone and graphophone have similar root meanings, the roots were already familiar from existing 19th-century words such as photograph, telegraph, and telephone. In British English, gramophone may refer to any sound-reproducing machine using disc records, the term phonograph was usually restricted to machines that used cylinder records. Gramophone generally referred to a wind-up machine, after the introduction of the softer vinyl records, 33 1⁄3-rpm LPs and 45-rpm single or two-song records, and EPs, the common name became record player or turntable. Often the home record player was part of a system that included a radio and, later, from about 1960, such a system began to be described as a hi-fi or a stereo. In American English, phonograph, properly specific to machines made by Edison, was used in a generic sense as early as the 1890s to include cylinder-playing machines made by others
9.
Operetta
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Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. By this time, the part of the genre name had become misleading. With this new connotation, opéra comique had dominated the French operatic stage since the decline of tragédie lyrique, most researchers acknowledge that the credit for creating the operetta form should go to Hervé, a singer, composer, librettist, conductor, and scene painter. In 1842 he wrote the little opérette, LOurs et le pacha, based on the vaudeville show by Scribe. In 1848, Hervé made his first notable appearance on the Parisian stage, with Don Quichotte et Sancho Pança, hervés most famous works are the Gounod-parody Le Petit Faust and Mamzelle Nitouche. Jacques Offenbach further developed and popularized operetta, giving it its enormous vogue during the Second Empire, Offenbachs earliest one-act pieces included Les deux aveugles, Le violoneux and Ba-ta-clan, and his first full-length operetta success was Orphée aux enfers. Offenbachs tradition was carried on by Robert Planquette, André Messager. What characterizes Offenbachs operettas is both the way they portray life, and the extremely frivolous way this is done. The character was modeled after Offenbachs female star Hortense Schneider. Considering how Zolas Nana describes an Offenbach-style operetta performance in Paris, it is not surprising that the mostly male, upper-class audiences in other cities like Vienna and Berlin longed to see these shows in their home towns as well, which inspired worldwide performance of Offenbachs works. The highly erotic way Offenbachs operettas were originally played, with stars like Hortense Schneider created a reaction from certain parts of the general public. Operetta was considered an art form. Indeed, together with its grotesque qualities, frivolity is one of the elements of authentic operetta à la Offenbach. It was only later, when audiences widened and became more middle and lower class, the most significant composer of operetta in the German language was the Austrian Johann Strauss II. His first operetta was Indigo und die vierzig Räuber and his third operetta, Die Fledermaus, became the most performed operetta in the world, and remains his most popular stage work. Its libretto was based on a written by Offenbachs librettists. In all, Strauss wrote 16 operettas and one opera, most with great success when first premiered, many of his lesser operettas are now largely forgotten, since his later librettists were less talented and he often composed independently of the plot. Strausss operettas, waltzes, polkas, and marches often have a strongly Viennese style, the Theater an der Wien never failed to draw huge crowds when his stage works were first performed
10.
1894 in architecture
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The year 1894 in architecture involved some significant events. In the United States, the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects is founded, april 21 - Quatro de Setembro Theater, Teresina, Brazil. May 14 - Blackpool Tower in Blackpool, England, completed to a design by Maxwell and Tuke, june 30 - Tower Bridge in London, designed by Horace Jones and John Wolfe-Barry. July - Dalen Hotel in Norway, designed by Haldor Børve, october 16 - Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden, designed by Fellner & Helmer. Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral, Montreal, Canada, reformed Church, Dresden, designed by Harald Julius von Bosse. Sacred Heart Church, designed by Ludwig Schöne, colegio de Santa Maria de Jesús in Barcelona, Spain, designed by Antoni Gaudí. Antiguo Cuartel Militar Español de Ponce, Puerto Rico, sisters of Charity Hospital, Zagreb, Croatia. Reichstag in Berlin, designed by Paul Wallot, royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp, designed by Jacob Winders and Frans van Dijk. Guaranty Building, Buffalo, New York, designed by Louis Sullivan, hôtel Tassel, Brussels, designed by Victor Horta. Hurlbut Memorial Gate, Detroit, Michigan, USA, lululaund, a house for Hubert von Herkomer at Bushey, England, based on a design by Henry Hobson Richardson. Rebuilt Köln Hauptbahnhof railway station in Cologne, Germany, designed by E. Grüttefie, royal Gold Medal - Frederic Leighton. Grand Prix de Rome, architecture, Alfred-Henri Recoura
11.
Johan Svendsen
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Johan Severin Svendsen was a Norwegian composer, conductor and violinist. Born in Christiania, Norway, he lived most his life in Copenhagen, Svendsens output includes two symphonies, a violin concerto, a cello concerto, and the Romance for violin, as well as a number of Norwegian Rhapsodies for orchestra. At one time Svendsen was a friend of the German composer Richard Wagner. His father was a teacher and Svendsen learned both the violin and clarinet from him. By the time he finished school, he was working as an orchestral musician, in Lübeck, on one of his tours, he came to the attention of a wealthy merchant who made it possible for him to study from 1863-67 at the Leipzig Conservatory. He began his studies with Ferdinand David, but problems with his hand forced him to switch to composition and he completed his studies in Leipzig in 1867, receiving first prize in composition. During this period, Svendsen had a son out of wedlock, gradually his attention turned to conducting. After spending time in Paris and Leipzig, he returned to Christiania, in the summer of 1871, he went to New York City to marry Sarah Levett Schmidt, whom he had met in Paris. He was conductor of the Musical Society Concerts in Christiania, then spent three years in Germany, Italy, England and France and he returned to teach and conduct in Kristiania. In 1883, he was appointed conductor of the Royal Theater Orchestra in Copenhagen. In 1884, he and his wife separated, and she moved to Paris and their relationship had been chaotic for several years. A famous anecdote would have it that in 1883, in a fit of anger and this incident was used by Henrik Ibsen in Hedda Gabler. If anything was caught up in the fire at all, it is unlikely it was anything near a complete symphony. However, some sketches, most likely for a symphony, were found by conductor Bjarte Engeset in 2007 and they were elaborated and orchestrated by Bjørn Morten Christophersen and premiered by the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Engeset in 2011. Following a divorce from Sarah, he married Juliette Haase, with whom he had living and had three children. His younger son from this marriage was the famous Danish actor Eyvind Johan-Svendsen, in stark contrast to his more famous contemporary and close friend, Edvard Grieg, Svendsen was famous for his skill of orchestration rather than that of harmonic value. While Grieg composed mostly for small instrumentation, Svendsen composed primarily for orchestras and his most famous work is his Romance for violin and orchestra, Op.26. He was very popular in Denmark and Norway during his lifetime, however this popularity did not translate into acceptance into the international repertory of classical music
12.
Werther
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Werther is an opera in four acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Édouard Blau, Paul Milliet and Georges Hartmann. It is loosely based on the German epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, earlier examples of operas using the story were made by Kreutzer and Pucitta. Massenet started composing Werther in 1885, completing it in 1887 and he submitted it to Leon Carvalho, the director of the Paris Opéra-Comique, that year, but Carvalho declined to accept it on the grounds that the scenario was too serious. Werther received its premiere on 16 February 1892 at the Imperial Theatre Hofoper in Vienna, the French-language premiere followed in Geneva on 27 December 1892. The United States premiere with the Metropolitan Opera took place in Chicago on 29 March 1894 and then in the companys main house in New York City three weeks later. The UK premiere was a performance at Covent Garden, London, on 11 June 1894 with Emma Eames as Charlotte, Sigrid Arnoldson as Sophie. Werther is still performed around the world and has been recorded many times. Although the role of Werther was written for a tenor, Massenet adjusted it for a baritone and it is very occasionally performed in this version, in which the changes affect only the vocal line for the title character. There are no changes to the words, to the lines for other characters. 2 flutes,2 Oboes,2 Clarinets in B-flat and A, Alto Saxophone,2 Bassoons,4 Horns in F,2 Trumpets,3 Trombones, Tuba, Timpani, Percussion, Harp, Strings. Time, Within the period July to December, in an year in the 1780s. In July, the widowed Bailiff, is teaching his six youngest children a Christmas carol and his drinking companions, Johann and Schmidt, arrive as Charlotte, the eldest daughter, dresses for a ball. Since her fiancé Albert is away, she is to be escorted by Werther, Werther arrives, and watches as Charlotte prepares her young siblings supper, just as her mother had before she died. He greets her and they leave for the ball, Albert returns unexpectedly after a six-month trip. He is unsure of Charlottes intentions and disappointed not to find her at home and he leaves after promising to return in the morning. After an orchestral interlude, Werther and Charlotte return very late and his declaration of love is interrupted by the announcement of Alberts return. Charlotte recalls how she promised her mother she would marry Albert. It is three months later, and Charlotte and Albert are now married and they walk happily to church to celebrate the ministers 50th wedding anniversary, followed by the disconsolate Werther
