Jakob Haibel

Jakob Haibel (20 July 1762 Graz-24 March 1826 Đakovo) was an Austrian composer, operatic tenor and choirmaster.

Biography

Around 1789 Haibel joined Emanuel Schikaneder’s company of performers at the Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden. While there he acted in plays and sang in operas and other musical productions. In the mid-1790s he started composing incidental music for company's plays and writing singspiele. His first score for the company was the ballet "Le nozze disturbate", which premiered in 1795 to great success. The company performed the work 39 times that year alone. Beethoven based his 12 variations on a "Menuett à la Vìganò" woo68 (1795) on an air from the ballet. In 1796, his opera "Der Tiroler Wastel" premiered at the theater to rave reviews. The work was Haibel's greatest success and was given 66 times that year and 118 times in all at the Freihaus-Theater. The work was staged in a multitude of other theatres throughout the Austro-German part of Europe and no other original score by Haibel ever equalled its success.

Haibel continued to compose music for the theater until the death of his first wife in 1806. He left Vienna for Djakovar, Slavonia, where he spent the rest of his life as choirmaster at the cathedral. Recent research has brought to light a quantity of sacred works by Haibel written during this time. He became Mozart’s posthumous brother-in-law when he married Sophie Weber, Constanze's sister, on 7 January 1807. After Haibel’s death in 1826, Sophie moved to Salzburg to live with her sister. She became close to Mozart during the last months of his life.

ources

*Peter Branscombe. The "New Grove Dictionary of Opera", edited by Stanley Sadie (1992), ISBN 0-333-73432-7 and ISBN 1-56159-228-5