Der Kaiser von Atlantis
Der Kaiser von Atlantis oder Die Tod-Verweigerung is a one-act opera by Viktor Ullmann with a libretto by Peter Kien. They collaborated on the work while interned in the Nazi concentration camp of Theresienstadt around 1943. The Nazis did not allow it to be performed there, and the script was not finalized until the 1970s.
The world premiere, presented by the Netherlands Opera at the Bellevue Centre, Amsterdam, took place on 16 December 1975. It was conducted by Kerry Woodward using the first performing edition, which he had been actively involved in preparing.
The title is sometimes given as Der Kaiser von Atlantis, oder Der Tod dankt ab, that is, The Emperor of Atlantis, or Death Abdicates, and described as a "legend in four scenes" rather than an opera. It follows the personification of death as an overworked soldier, driven to abandon his duties by the senseless warmongering of the tyrannical Kaiser Overall.
Composition history
About 1943, Ullmann and Kien were inmates at the Nazi concentration camp of Theresienstadt when they collaborated on the opera. It was rehearsed at Theresienstadt in March 1944, but the Nazi authorities interpreted the work's depiction of the character of the Kaiser as a satire on Adolf Hitler and did not allow it to be performed. Both the composer and the librettist were murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Prior to his death, Ullmann had expressed that his time in Theresienstadt did not damper his creative drive. This sentiment is confirmed by Ullmann himself:Ullmann entrusted his manuscripts to a fellow-prisoner, Dr. Emil Utitz, a former Professor of Philosophy at the German University in Prague, who served as the camp's librarian. Utitz survived the camp and passed the manuscripts on to another survivor, Dr. Hans Gunther Adler, a friend of Ullmann's, some of whose poems Ullmann had set to music. The score was a working version with edits, substitutions, and alternatives made in the course of rehearsals. Dr. Adler deposited the original manuscripts and two copies of the libretto in his possession at the Goetheanum in Dornach, the center for the anthroposophical movement with which Ullmann was associated. The manuscripts subsequently passed to the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basle.
Performance history
First performing edition
The first performing edition of the work was prepared between 1973 and 1975 by Kerry Woodward, a London-based musician and arranger who had a personal connection with the Adler family. Woodward worked through the nearly complete orchestra score, loose pages of additional music, and two copies of the libretto, one version in Ullmann’s handwriting and the other one typed. Woodward conducted the world premiere of the piece with the Dutch National Opera on 16 December 1975 at the in Amsterdam, a production the company later took to Brussels for two performances in May 1976 and to Spoleto for four more the following month.Using an English translation prepared by the poet Aaron Kramer, the San Francisco Spring Opera Theater led by Woodward presented the American premiere of the piece on 21 April 1977. Woodward also led the New York premiere with the New Opera Theatre at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on 19 May 1977 and five performances in Israel in May 1978. He continued to perform the work with the DNO both in Amsterdam the following month and at the Nottingham Playhouse in Nottingham, England a year later. In addition to these early stage performances, a feature film of the opera performed by the London Sinfonietta was released in 1977. John Goldschmidt directed the film, and the orchestra was led by Woodward and starred Teresa Stratas and Siegmund Nimsgern. The film won the Prix Italia a year later.
Towards the end of 1976 and into 1977, Woodward consulted Rosemary Brown, a prominent spiritualist known for mediumship with dead composers and for transcribing musical works they dictated. According to transcriptions of their sessions together, Brown claimed that she was in contact with Ullmann, who wanted to make changes in the score. Brown communicated these instructions to Woodward, who incorporated them into a revised edition for later performances. These changes included altering the instrumentation of the second part of Death's aria near the end of the opera, substituting strings for harpsichord and adding trumpet and flute.
Other performing editions and performances
In 1981, Michael Graubart and Nicholas Till prepared an edition based on the manuscripts in Dr. Adler's possession as well as on Woodward's edition, following many of Woodward's choices. That provided the basis for the British premiere at the Studio Theatre of London's Morley College on 15 May 1981 and for additional performances in May 1985 at the Imperial War Museum.In 1988, London saw two productions; one from Vienna Kammeroper at the Bloomsbury Festival on 11 May, and a second from Mecklenburgh Opera at the Donmar Warehouse on 10 June. This was directed by John Abulafia with a new English translation by Sonja Lyndon and conducted by Anne Manson. The Mecklenburgh production was revived at the South Bank Centre and toured to Scotland, and won the Prudential Award. The 1993 BBC TV film 'The Music of Terezín' by Simon Broughton incorporated scenes from the Mecklenburgh production.
On behalf of Herbert Gantschacher, the artistic director of ARBOS - Company for Music and Theatre, Ingo Schultz worked on the reconstruction of the opera's original score between 1992 and 1993 in cooperation with Karel Berman, who rehearsed the role of Death at Terezín and had a copy of the score he had made by hand, Paul Kling, who was the concertmaster of the chamber-orchestra of the rehearsals at Terezín 1944, and Herbert Thomas Mandl. Herbert Gantschacher staged this edition of the opera for ARBOS - Company for Music and Theatre in Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Sweden, Canada, and the U.S.
Tomasz Konina directed the Polish premiere at Warsaw Chamber Opera in Warsaw in 2005.
Other performances have been given by Ravinia Festival at Temple Shalom in Chicago, City Opera of Vancouver, Long Beach Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Dioneo Opera, and English Touring Opera in London and locations throughout England. It was presented in Denver, Colorado, by Central City Opera, in collaboration with other Denver organizations, in January 2013. The New Millennium Orchestra, in collaboration with the City of Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs, presented the opera in March 2013 on the Pritzker stage of Millennium Park. It was performed in Melbourne at Monash University's Caulfield campus in July 2012 by IOpera, and by Perth Hebrew Congregation, Perth, Western Australia, in June 2014, by Lostandfound Opera Juilliard Opera Center performed the work in November 2015. The Dutch M31 Foundation made a small documentary with all the old cast members of the first performance and performed the work in 2016 with a new cast in several theatres in the Netherlands. In October 2020, the Atlanta Opera produced socially distanced performances of the work outdoors in a circus tent.
Roles
Critical appreciation
Descriptions and summaries of Kien's libretto vary widely. John Rockwell described the opera as a story of "the abdication of death in the face of life's universal horrors." Harold Schonberg thought that "the play is stronger and more interesting than the music....In several spots the Ullmann work almost makes it as an opera." Most summaries report that Death insists that the Emperor be the first to die, but others emphasize the ending in which "miraculously, the Emperor comes to understand his crimes" and "to allow Death to save millions from the agony of life-without-death, he offers himself as Death's first victim."In an interview, conductor James Conlon, a prominent reviver of works lost in the Holocaust, described the opera as both a political satire and a parable of hope in which the isolated Emperor represents Hitler and the Drummer his confidante Eva Braun. The young lovers and Harlequin embody "the lost world of normal human emotion."
Andrew Porter has described the text of the opera:
The plot is no cut-and-dried allegory but an elusive death-welcoming parable about a mad, murderous ruler, possibly redeemed at last, who says farewell to the world in a mock-Faustian vision of a natural paradise no longer spoiled by men; had his dream come true all men would be dead. The Emperor of Atlantis, ruler over much of the world, proclaims universal war and declares that his old ally Death will lead the campaign. Death, offended by the Emperor's presumption, breaks his sabre; henceforth men will not die. Confusion results: a Soldier and a Girl-Soldier from opposite sides sing a love duet instead of fighting; the sick and suffering find no release. Death offers to return to men on one condition-that the Emperor be the first to die. He accepts and sings his farewell.
Synopsis
Prologue
The loudspeaker introduces the premise and characters to the audience.Scene 1
Harlequin relates his impoverished life without laughter or love. Death joins him and together they lament the slow passage of time in their grim world. He belittles Harlequin's wish to die and explains how much more dire his own situation is. He lacks respect now that "motorized chariots of war" have replaced him, the "old fashioned craftsman of dying," and work him to exhaustion with little satisfaction.The Drummer announces the latest decree of the Emperor: Everyone will be armed and everyone will fight until there are no survivors. Death denounces the Emperor for usurping his role. He declares that he is on strike and breaks his saber.