The legend

According to the legend (apparently based on the real history of Marie of Brabant, wife of Louis II, Duke of Bavaria and Count Palatine of the Rhine), she was the wife of the palatine Siegfried of Treves, falsely accused of infidelity by the head of the household and sentenced to death, However, she was spared by the executioner to lived for six years with her son in a cave in the Ardennes, where Siegfried discovered her and reinstated her in her former honour.[1]

Stage versions of the legend

Among the many dramatized versions of the story are:

Leben und Tod der heiligen Genoveva a dramatic poem by Ludwig Tieck (1799)

Genoveva a play by Christian Friedrich Hebbel (1843)

Genoveva an opera by Robert Schumann (1850, inspired by Hebbel's play)

Geneviève de Brabant an opéra bouffe by Jacques Offenbach (1859)

Genoveva a play by Mathilde Wesendonck (1866)

Geneviève de Brabant a stage work by Erik Satie (1899/1900)

Suor Angelica an opera by Giacomo Puccini (1918 opera, inspired by Hebbel's play)

Performance history in South Africa

1866: Performed as Lucretia Borgia by the Le Roy-Duret Company in the Harrington Street Theatre, Cape Town, on

Sources

D.C. Boonzaier, 1923. "My playgoing days – 30 years in the history of the Cape Town stage", in SA Review, 9 March and 24 August 1932. (Reprinted in Bosman 1980: pp. 374-439.)

F.C.L. Bosman. 1980. Drama en Toneel in Suid-Afrika, Deel II, 1856-1912. Pretoria: J.L. van Schaik: pp.203-205

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