The Queen of Sheba

Karl Goldmark

1875

Printed page with German text and simple border.

Die Königin von Saba (The Queen of Sheba) is Karl Goldmark’s most famous opera. Premiering in Vienna in 1875, its imaginative plot revolves around a love triangle involving the Queen of Sheba, Assad (an ambassador at the court of the biblical King Solomon), and Sulamith (Assad’s betrothed) during the Queen of Sheba’s visit to King Solomon.

Credits

Karl Goldmark, "Die Königin von Saba" [The Queen of Sheba] (Leipzig: Hugo Pohle, n.d.), Plate 348.H.P.342.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 6.

Engage with this Source

Creator Bio

Karl Goldmark

1830–1915

Hungarian-born Karl Goldmark was a composer who overcame poverty and lack of formal training to achieve critical and popular renown. Though hardly prolific, Goldmark produced several important operas, symphonies, and concertos, finding fame in Vienna, his adopted city. A cantor’s son, born into an enormous and nearly destitute Jewish family, Goldmark learned the piano and violin before turning to orchestral music. On the whole, he rejected the avant-garde for the traditional, finding original variations within classic musical forms.

Related Guide

Music and Opera in Jewish Culture, 1750–1880

One of the most striking changes in European Jewish culture toward the later eighteenth century was marked by the entry of Jews into art music, opera houses, and the stage.

You may also like

Minus Money

Great was the joy in the mid-1950s in Budapest’s Klauzál Square, in the house of a widow with many children. Those lining up before her vegetable stand in the market saw her smile for the first time…
View Source
Photograph of many people sitting in rows.
Tooltip info icon

The First Habima Theater Audience

The audience at the first formal performance by the Habima theater troupe in 1918. This set of short plays, Neshef bereshit (A Festival of Our Beginning), was performed in the Moscow Art Theatre under…
View Source

Dina’s Braids

Dina has reached the age of seventeen, but her mind and manners are far beyond those years. She is comely and demure and full of charm. Two modest eyes and two wild braids. Why wild? Because they have…
View Source