Friedrich Schiller’s play Wilhelm Tell, first performed in Weimar in 1804, occupies a broader cultural and political space than most literary dramas. More people living today may have made a holiday excursion across Lake Lucerne on the paddle steamer “Schiller” than have seen Wilhelm Tell performed, but who has not heard of the bowman who shot an apple off his son’s head, and who could not tongue the overture to Rossini’s 1829 opera Guillaume Tell?
Schiller, whose plays remain staples of German repertory theatre programs, was once celebrated throughout the Western world as a dramatist and thinker of world-wide importance, as statuary in public buildings and parks in the USA and Verdi’s …
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Citation: Dye, Ellis. "Wilhelm Tell". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 August 2007 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=11148, accessed 21 November 2024.]
