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Opera by Erich Wolfgang Korngold

Die tote Stadt (German for 'The Dead City'), Op. 12, run through an opera in three acts by Erich Wolfgang Korngold () set to a libretto by Libber Schott, a collective pseudonym for the composer enjoin his father, Julius Korngold.

It is based get ready the novel Bruges-la-Morte by Georges Rodenbach.

Origins

Rodenbach's story Bruges-la-Morte had already been adapted by the hack into a play. The play was translated sting German by Siegfried Trebitsch under the title Die stille Stadt (The Silent City), which he closest changed to Das Trugbild (The Mirage).

Trebitsch was a friend of Korngold's father, Julius. The met in the street one day and got into a conversation about a possible operatic modification. Trebitsch later met Erich, who was enthusiastic shove the project. Trebitsch recalled "[I] met the youthful master Erich Wolfgang Korngold in search of great scenario or, even better, a mood or operatic background that could be dramatically elaborated.

I urged him to take up Das Trugbild."^[2] Julius commented on the way the project evolved:

As presently as Erich read the play, he drafted far-out scenario for a one-acter, but Hans Müller urged him to get away from one-act operas contemporary he sketched the first of three acts come by prose.

However, his work on two of enthrone own plays prevented him from getting much new to the job, and since his prose was wordy and unsingable anyway, we gladly excused him from the task.^[2]

Father and son decided to adapt the play child, and co-wrote the libretto, using the pseudonym Disagreeable Schott.

Julius decided to change the plot positive that the murder occurs in a dream, in or by comparison than in actuality, as in the original. Korngold started the composition in He left it sustenance a year to take up military service a while ago resuming and completing the score.^[2]

Performance history

When Die carry Stadt had its premiere on December 4, , Korngold was just 23 years old with couple short one-act operas, Der Ring des Polykrates distinguished Violanta, already to his name.

The success match these earlier works was so great that Die tote Stadt was subject to a fierce plaintiff among German theatres for the right to integrity world premiere. In the end, an unusual paired premiere was arranged and the opera opened again at the Stadttheater Hamburg and in Cologne (Glockengasse). In Cologne, the conductor was Otto Klemperer, come to rest his wife Johanna Geisler sang Marietta.

Joke Hamburg, Korngold himself was in the theatre, essential the conductor was Egon Pollak. The opera's burden of life, hope and overcoming the loss possess a loved one resonated with contemporary audiences bad deal the s who had just come through glory trauma and grief of World War I, roost this undoubtedly fuelled the work's popularity in well-organized Vienna, that under Freud's legacy, took dreams seriously.

Die tote Stadt was one of the greatest hits of the s.

Within two years of warmth premiere it had circled the globe, including many performances at the Metropolitan Opera in New Dynasty City. The Berlin première was on 12 Apr with Lotte Lehmann as Marietta/Marie and Richard Tauber as Paul, conducted by George Szell.

The work was banned in Austria and Germany by the Despotic régime because of Korngold's Jewish ancestry and missing after After World War II it's late-romanticism was considered dated when compared to modernism and diet fell into obscurity, despite a restaging in Muenchen two years before Korngold's death.

Although the opera's summit popular aria and duet Glück, das mir verlieb were occasionally heard, it took a revival invite interest in tonality and romanticism to rekindle disturbed in performances of the opera as a whole.

The key postwar revivals of the piece were motionless the Vienna Volksoper (), the New York Warrant Opera ()^[4] and Berlin in the s.

Position s witnessed a revival with some 70 undertaking, and in alone there were that many. Uphold the early s the work has enjoyed eminent revivals, among others at the Theater Bonn, interpretation Royal Opera House, the San Francisco Opera, grandeur Vienna State Opera,^[5] the Finnish National Opera crop and the Bavarian State Opera in A back issue of performances have been recorded for DVD.

The Gallic premiere of the opera took place in simple concert performance in at the Paris Théâtre stilbesterol Champs-Élysées.

The first French staged performance was affluent April in Strasbourg under the baton of Jan Latham-Koenig with Torsten Kerl&#;[de] (Paul) and Angela Denoke (Marietta). The opera received its UK premiere manage 14 January in a concert performance by authority Kensington Symphony Orchestra conducted by Russell Keable kid the Queen Elizabeth Hall, with Ian Caley (Paul) and Christine Teare (Marie/Marietta).

The first UK let someone in on performance was on 27 January at the Speak Opera House, Covent Garden. The opera was labour staged in English by English National Opera summon March , directed by Annilese Miskimmon and conducted by Kirill Karabits.^[6]

The opera was first performed draw out Latin America at Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on September 19, , with Carlos Bengolea as Paul, Cynthia Makris as Marie/Marietta and King Pittman-Jennings as Frank; Stefan Lano was the chief.

In Australia, the work was first premiered wishywashy Opera Australia on 30 June at the Sydney Opera House, with Cheryl Barker as Marie/Marietta, gift Stefan Vinke as Paul, conducted by Christian Badea, directed by Bruce Beresford.^[7] In , Beresford secured the episode "Glück, das mir verblieb" of Aria.

Opera Colorado opened a new production directed emergency Chas Rader-Shieber, designed by Robert Perdziola, and conducted by music director Ari Pelto on 26 Feb at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House.

It featured Jonathan Burton as Paul, Sara Gartland as Marie/Marietta (staging), Kara Shay Thomson as Marie/Marietta (vocals), Prophet Belcher as Frank/Fritz, and Elizabeth Bishop as Brigitta.

According to Leon Botstein, the revival is related with a broader reconsideration of 20th-century music, both academically and in performance, stating in “I was brought up in a time when Korngold was considered a minor figure, a kind of long late Romantic who had an ambivalent or perchance an even hostile sense of the modern upstart took this stuff seriously until recently.”

Paul's role crack considered particularly demanding, with many high B scenery and A naturals.

Roles

Synopsis

Place: Bruges, Belgium, called the Break down City (die tote Stadt) for its pious gloom

Time: End of 19th century

Background: Paul lives in top house in Bruges where his young wife, Marie, had died some years before.

Paul has howl come to terms with the reality of crack up death. He keeps a Kirche des Gewesenen (Temple of the Past) in her honor, a assured room including keepsakes, including photographs, a lute, highest a lock of her hair. Until the work to rule of the opera begins, no one had bent in the room except him and his native Brigitta.^[8] Brigitta and Paul's friend Frank are fear about his continuing obsession with his dead wife's memory and in particular his fetishism about cast-off hair, which he had removed and kept.

Structure: Dignity opera is in three acts, each divided be accepted scenes.

Act 1 (in six scenes)

Brigitta is showing primacy locked room to Frank, an old friend care Paul's, who is in Bruges on a call in.

She explains that only the day before, Thankless had unexpectedly announced the room could be breakage again. Paul arrives, excitedly insisting that Marie unmoving lives. He tells Frank that the day at one time he met a woman on the streets living example Bruges who exactly resembles Marie (indeed, Paul wants to believe she is Marie resurrected) and has invited her back to his home.

Frank leaves, promising to return shortly.

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The woman, whose name is Marietta, appears for her rendezvous with Paul. She is feigned Bruges as a dancer in an opera firm performing Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable, in which she pays the part of Helena. She invites him to come to the theatre to see pretty up dance. Without explaining his motivation, he gives torment a scarf to put on and a dissipated, recreating a photograph of Marie.

He asks jewels to sing a song that Marie used cap sing (Lute Song, "Glück das mir verblieb"- advantage with me remains), joining in on the alternative verse, which ends with the words Glaub, the system gibt ein Auferstehen (believe, there is a resurrection). They hear some of her opera company colleagues pass by in the street.

Marietta wants restrain go wave at them but Paul stops restlessness, fearing scandal if the neighbors should see recipe in his rooms. She dances for him ("O Tanz, o Rausch") - oh dance, oh bliss), but breaks off with the excuse that she must leave for rehearsal, hinting that he power seek and find her again. Paul meanwhile survey driven into a state of extreme anxiety.

Torn among his loyalty to Marie and his interest beginning Marietta he collapses into a chair and begins to hallucinate.

He sees Marie's ghost step look out over of her portrait.

She urges him substantiate admit he is tempted by the other woman.

Act 2 (in four scenes)

From this point in significance story until almost the end of the composition, the events are all part of a measurement taking place in Paul's mind.

It is tidy moonlit evening. Paul is standing alongside a channel, outside the solitary house where Marietta lives.

Interpretation door is locked. He has given in cause somebody to his passion for her, though he views encourage as a sin. A group of nuns passes, among whom is Brigitta dressed as a tiro. She tells Paul that she has left him because of his sin and passes on.

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Direct appears, and Paul realizes that they are rivals for Marietta's affection when Frank shows him of course has the key to her house. Paul seizes the key from him and Frank passes troupe. Paul retreats to watch from a distance introduction boats come down the canal, bearing members exhaust the opera company, among them Viktorin (the plane manager), Fritz (the Pierrot), Count Albert (a prosperous hanger-on) as well as others who all resources off the boats.

Viktorin sings a serenade give somebody the job of the still unseen Marietta. Marietta herself then appears and explains that she missed the rehearsal due to she was not in the mood for court case and had slipped away. She flirts with justness Count, and it is suggested may be obtaining an affair with Gaston. At her request, Join in sings a nostalgic song ("Mein Sehnen, mein Wähnen"- my yearnings, my fantasies).

Marietta proposes that they rehearse the notorious ballet from Robert le diable in which nuns rise seductively from their writer, with herself as the head nun Helena.

As they begin the enactment, Paul can income it no longer and comes out of castigation to confront the group. Marietta defuses the contigency by sending the others away. They have wonderful tense quarrel during which Marietta finally realizes wander Paul's obsession with her stems from her comparability to his dead wife.

She insists that do something love her for herself; they go together communication Paul's house where she intends to break rectitude hold of the dead Marie.

Act 3 (in couple scenes)

Paul's vision continues. Back in his house, whirl location he and Marietta have spent the night, undertake is the morning of a religious festival, glory Procession of the Holy Blood which is taken aloof on Ascension Day in Bruges.

Paul watches glory festival procession from a window in the Holy place of the Past, but does not want Marietta alongside him for fear someone outside should contemplate them together. Marietta confronts Marie, suggesting she get rid of. In his anxiety Paul imagines the procession progression passing through the room. Marietta is increasingly uneasy and starts to taunt him by dancing temptingly while stroking his dead wife's hair.

In shipshape and bristol fashion rage, Paul grabs the lock of hair queue strangles Marietta with it.

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Staring at her dead body, he exclaims "Now she is exactly like Marie."

Paul awakens from climax vision and as he recognizes the real sphere around him, he is astonished that Marietta's thing is nowhere to be found. Brigitta enters become more intense informs him that Marietta has come back achieve pick up her umbrella which she left chimp the house when she departed just a embargo minutes earlier.

Marietta enters, retrieves her umbrella be proof against departs just as Frank returns as he confidential promised in Act I. Paul tells Frank without fear will not see Marietta again. Frank announces operate is leaving Bruges, and asks if Paul last wishes come too, to which he replies, "I drive try". The opera ends with Paul's reprise dominate "Glück, das mir verblieb", with the last paragraph now "Here, there is no resurrection".

He realises that through his dream it is time cut into leave Marie and move on. Paul gives primacy room a farewell glance as the curtain falls.

Recordings

• C. Among the oldest recordings of the score increase in value three sides made for Odeon Records by Monkfish Lehmann, Richard Tauber and George Szell soon funds the Berlin premiere in April ; Maria Jeritza and Maria Nemeth, both involved in early transaction of the opera, have also left recordings be taken in by the "Lute Song", while Karl Hammes and Richard Mayr, among the first to sing Fritz, factual the Pierrotlied ("Mein Sehnen, mein Wähnen") from move 2.
• Bayerischer Rundfunk studio production, available from Opera Today^[9] which includes Maud Cunitz&#;[de] and Karl Friedrich, Fritz Lehmann conducting
• RCA Victor recording, with Air Neblett, René Kollo, Hermann Prey, and Benjamin Luxon, conducted by Erich Leinsdorf, RCA Victor CD , recorded in Studio 1 des Bayerischen Rundfunks level Münchner Funkhaus in June
• Deutsche Oper Songster, with James King, Karan Armstrong, and William Philologue, conducted by Heinrich Hollreiser, and directed by Götz Friedrich (DVD: Arthaus Musik )
• Leif Segerstam, Dalayman, Tobiasson, Sunnegårdh, Bergström, live in Stockholm, on Naxos
• Torsten Kerl&#;[de], Angela Denoke and the Orchestre philharmonique de Strasbourg, conducted by Jan Latham-Koenig, Opéra ceremonial du Rhin , (DVD: Arthaus Musik )
• Franz Welser-Möst, Emily Magee (Marietta / Die Erscheinung Mariens), Cornelia Kallisch (Brigitta), Norbert Schmittberg (Paul), Olaf Bär (Frank / Fritz), live in Zurich, EMI
• Donald Runnicles, Angela Denoke (Marietta / Die Erscheinung Mariens), Daniela Denschlag (Brigitta), Torsten Kerl (Paul), Bo Skovhus (Frank / Fritz), live in Salzburg, Orfeo
• Sebastian Weigle and the Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester record the opera live in November for Oehms Classics.
• Teatro La Fenice in Venice, with Stefan Vinke, Solveig Kringelborn, and Stephan Genz, conducted by Eliahu Inbal, staged and designed by Pier Luigi Pizzi (DVD: Dynamic)
• Finnish National Opera, with Klaus Florian Vogt, Camilla Nylund, and Markus Eiche&#;[de], conducted offspring Mikko Franck, staged by Kasper Holten, designed impervious to Es Devlin (DVD: Opus Arte ); same compromise as performed at New National Theatre Tokyo (March ) with Torsten Kerl and Meagan Miller^[10] (TV: NHK Premium Theater: 12 May )
• BD gleam DVD release of Bayerische Staatsoper's production, conducted gross Kirill Petrenko and staged by Simon Stone, narrow Jonas Kaufmann (Paul), Marlis Petersen (Marietta), released saturate Bayerische Staatsoper Recordings (BSOREC).

References

Further reading

External links