What will it feel like, that moment when this music will be heard again for the first time in 200 years? When an entire orchestra will play the notes she has edited with such meticulous care? At the moment, Evelyn Reisch can only imagine it. One thing, however, is certain: Without the dedication of the 25-year-old student from Bremen, this moment would very likely never have happened. Marschner’s opera Lucretia would probably still be collecting dust in the Saxon State Library in Dresden.

An Unusual Student Job: Editing an Entire Opera

The work began in the spring of 2024. Evelyn Reisch still clearly remembers the moment she first heard about the project. As a bachelor’s student of Musicology, she was studying digital music notation as part of the “Music and Media” module. The course coordinator, composer Ezzat Nashashibi, was in contact with Professor Ulrich Tadday from historical musicology, who was looking for a student assistant for a project. On Nashashibi’s recommendation, Tadday approached Reisch and told her he had an interesting project for a student assistant. It would be exciting, somewhat unusual and, to be honest, a great deal of work: Could she imagine editing an entire opera?

“Professor Tadday’s offer came as a real surprise, and I didn’t want to rush the decision. Still, I accepted fairly quickly,” the student recalls. “I soon realized that this was a major opportunity for me to gain new experiences beyond my degree program.” She has not regretted it. Working on Lucretia also sparked her strong interest in music philology. Since then, she has expanded her knowledge in the field by participating in the Beethoven Study Program and completing an internship with the Brahms Complete Edition project. An internship with the music publisher Bärenreiter is also coming up soon.

The complete hardcopy of the Lucretia score has recently been finalized. During the conference in early June, the elaborately designed cover will be unveiled for the first time. One detail of the cover is already known: Evelyn Reisch is listed as an equal co-editor alongside Ulrich Tadday. It was important to the professor of musicology to acknowledge Reisch’s contribution. “It is certainly unusual for students to immerse themselves in a topic with such passion and precision. It went extremely well,” says Tadday.

Conference Open to the Public

The conference at Forum at Domshof in downtown Bremen is open to the public and does not require registration. Evelyn Reisch and Ulrich Tadday will give a lecture explaining the development of the Lucretia edition and shedding light, among other things, on the opera’s origins. In addition, music students and professional singers will perform excerpts from the opera. “You simply need to hear Lucretia,” says Professor Tadday.

But making that possible required Reisch to overcome many obstacles over the past years. After all, she faced a mountain of work in the most literal sense, as the historical score comprises 700 pages that she had to make usable for modern productions. In practical terms, that meant transferring hundreds of thousands of notes, key signatures, and dynamic markings individually into a digital music notation program. And that was not all – the real challenge lay in interpreting the 200-year-old source. “To transcribe the lyrics, I first had to learn to read German Kurrent script. The notes were not always written clearly either. In some cases, some information was even missing and we had to add it to our edition. The fact that the source was written by several different people did not make things any easier,” the student recalls.

Marschner’s Lucretia had been performed only once. For this reason, there were hardly any recent references or interpretations she could use for orientation. In fact, only the first act of the composer’s autograph score has survived. Reisch therefore worked with a copyist’s manuscript that she and Tadday were able to locate at the Saxon State Library in Dresden. This copyist’s manuscript is the only known source in which the opera has been preserved in full. In other words, the conditions were far from ideal. But Reisch persevered. “Over time, you learn how to deal more and more effectively with the problems you encounter. My internship at the Brahms Research Center in Kiel certainly helped me as well,” Reisch says. Besides, she was not entirely on her own. She was able to discuss difficult passages with Professor Tadday, and there was also a proofreader involved.

While working on Marschner’s Lucretia, Evelyn Reisch not only gained extensive further academic experience but also successfully completed her bachelor’s degree. She is now in the final semester of the master’s program in Historical Musicology at the University of Hamburg, but will soon return to the University of Bremen. Professor Tadday recently offered her a doctoral position, which she gladly accepted and is due to begin at the end of the year. Lucretia seems to have been only the first act of her academic career.

More on the Topic:

Lucretia conference website

Audio sample of Marschner’s opera Lucretia on YouTube