Carl Ludwig Giesecke FRSE (6 April 1761 in Augsburg – 5 March 1833 in Dublin) was a German actor, librettist, polar explorer and mineralogist. In his youth he was called Johann Georg Metzler; in his later career in Ireland he was Sir Charles Lewis Giesecke. Late in his life he claimed to friends to have been, in his youth, the librettist of Mozart’s famous opera The Magic Flute.
Early life His father was Johann Georg Metzler, a Protestant who worked as a tailor in Augsburg. His mother was named Sibylla Magdalena Götz. He attended the Gymnasium in Augsburg, and did well academically, as is known from the surviving remarks of his schoolmaster recommending him for university study. He attended the University of Göttingen from 1781 to 1784, studying law. He also developed a side interest in mineralogy, attending the lectures of the naturalist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. It was in 1781 that he took the pseudonym by which he is now known. The name change was an effective cover for Giesecke's ancestry, which he always refused to discuss. Indeed, Giesecke's original name remained unknown to scholars until 1910, when the Danish geologist K. J. V. Steenstrup discovered an 1810 letter from his sister to the Danish authorities enquiring about the welfare of her brother, then in Greenland; the letter established Giesecke's relationship with the Augsburg Metzlers. Whittaker suggests that he chose "Giesecke" (also spelled "Gieseke") in admiration of the poet Nikolaus Dietrich Giseke.
His career in the theater In 1784, he left the university to become an itinerant player, and worked in various theaters over a period of six years. In 1789, he became employed in the Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna, then under the direction of Johann Friedel. When Emanuel Schikaneder's troupe took over the theater as its new resident company later in the same year, Giesecke was one of the few players that Schikaneder retained. As remembered by Ignaz Castelli, Giesecke was not outstanding as an actor; he "has no distinct speciality and plays whatever roles come his way." His value to the Schikaneder company was more as a stage manager and especially as a writer and poet. According to Buch, there were three house writers in the company: Schikaneder himself, his wife Eleonore Schikaneder, and Giesecke.
Giesecke achieved an early success with his adapted version of Sophie Seyler's Hüon und Amande, based on an earlier work by Christoph Martin Wieland and set to music by Paul Wranitzky. This was the first opera performed by Schikaneder's troupe at their new theater, and established a tradition within the company of fairy-tale operas that was to culminate two years later in Mozart's celebrated opera The Magic Flute. Oberon is similar to The Magic Flute in its plot and characters, and a number of the singers who participated in Oberon took similar roles in the later opera. As Giesecke had not acknowledged his debt to Sophie Seyler, he came under criticism for plagiarism. According to Peter Branscombe, "it has long been recognized that Giesecke, the named author of Wranitzky's libretto, deserves little credit for what is largely a plagiarism," concluding that "Giesecke's Oberon, König der Elfen is hardly more than a mild revision of Seyler's book." In later work, Giesecke translated the Italian libretti of Mozart's operas Le nozze di Figaro (1793) and Così fan tutte (1794) into German. In total he was to write libretti for more than fifteen operas by various composers between 1789 and 1800; see listing below. As an actor, Giesecke is remembered for having been in the cast for the premiere (30 September 1791) of The Magic Flute. He played the mostly speaking role of the First Slave. Later in life, he was said to have claimed to be the author of the opera's libretto, which is usually attributed to Emanuel Schikaneder; see discussion below. During his Vienna years, Giesecke became a Freemason, joining "Zur gekrönten Hoffnung", the same lodge as Mozart. He is believed to have been the librettist for the "Freimaurerkantate" Laut verkünde unsre Freude, KV 623 (1791), a work written for and performed at a Masonic celebration just as Mozart's final illness was setting in (see Death of Mozart). The head of Giesecke's lodge was Ignaz von Born, a distinguished scientist who specializations included mineralogy. Other eminent mineralogists were also members of the lodge and Giesecke's membership evidently rekindled his interest in the subject. When Giesecke ultimately departed from Vienna (1800), he did so under a shadow and perhaps in a hurry, as surviving court records show proceedings against him for non-payment of a year's rent. Personal effects he left behind were sold in 1801 to help cover this debt.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
