About the work
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's monodrama was composed in 1778 as an interpolation in the farce Der Triumph der Empfindsamkeit and later revised as an independent work. In 1815 it was premiered as an autonomous work at the Weimar Court Theatre in a completely new setting by Karl Eberwein. The short, intense piece shows Proserpina's lament in Hades — a single role, carried by shifting moods and mythic density.
Plot
Proserpina, abducted by Pluto to the underworld and made queen of Hades, laments her dark realm and her separation from her mother Ceres and the light of the upper world. While she expresses her pain she discovers a pomegranate and eats from it — not knowing that this action binds her definitively to the underworld. In the closing section she recognises what she has done, and the chorus of the Fates proclaims her destiny.
Cultural significance
Proserpina is Goethe's only pure monologue composition and among the earliest German monodramas. The work was conceived as a theoretical experiment in which a single voice was to carry the entire emotional range of a drama. Eberwein's 1815 setting considerably expanded the textual basis. Modern performances emphasise the proto-expressionist quality of the text and its proximity to later monodrama traditions — Schoenberg's Erwartung, for instance, can be seen as anticipated by it.