VIKTOR ULLMANN (1898-1944): Der Kaiser von Atlantis.

Description: English synopsis. European music lost a major figure when the Nazis murdered Viktor Ullmann. An outstanding composer, he studied with Schoenberg, and later with Zemlinsky, developing a powerfully eloquent personal idiom with roots in both but excessively indebted to neither. He had a successful early career in the 1920s and 1930s, producing a sizeable body of music (much of which is presumed lost), and immersing himself in the intellectual world of the Weimar Republic, Czech Republic, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which informs his creative output and is concentrated into The Emperor of Atlantis. He was sent to Theresienstadt in 1942, and to Auschwitz in 1944, writing a considerable amount of music before he was sent off to be killed, which survived him thanks to his foresight in entrusting his manuscripts to a friend before his departure. The Emperor of Atlantis is a work of multifaceted brilliance. It is a pitch-black satire on the surreally inhuman system of the National Socialists, drawing on the experiences of life in the death-haunted sham "model ghetto" of the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Credit must also be given to his librettist, the brilliant writer and artist Peter Kien (1919-44), whose clever, surreal, razor-edged text is the perfect foil to Ullmann's kaleidoscopic fusion of musical styles, incorporating melodrama, recitative, aria, duet, trio, jazz, popular dances of the 1920s, song, glorious tonal harmony and pungent dissonance – flipping in an instant between sardonic parody, broad humor, and heartrending sincerity. Kien peppered the libretto with coded references to current events, and Ullmann responded in kind, with allusions to "forbidden" music, notably Mahler's Das Lied - it feels as though he is taunting his captors, defying them to realise that a pastiche of a banned work was being rehearsed, and possibly performed, right under their noses. He also managed to include the "Angel of Death" motif from Suk's Asrael Symphony as the Loudspeaker's call to attention "Hallo Hallo!"; a distorted, minor-key version of the "Deutschlandlied" for a recitation of the Emperor’s titles and honorifics; and the hymn "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" in the final chorale. The plot centers on the Emperor, isolated in his palace, accompanied only by a Loudspeaker that broadcasts his orders to the world. Harlequin, his leitmotif representing life, is a disgruntled old man sitting outside bemoaning his lot, in conversation with Death, dressed “in a worn-out imperial Austrian uniform”. Death is fed up with his job, and has gone on strike. The Emperor (whose leitmotif is a sequence of highly dissonant chords on the harmonium - throughout the work the instrumentation is a masterpiece of the triumph of originality over necessity - decrees a war of everybody against everybody else, announced by a flag-wagging jingoistic Drummer, the Emperor's "state media" as we would say today - but nobody dies, because Death refuses to have anything to do with it. In a stunningly prophetic premonition of today’s era of misinformation, the Emperor announces that it was he who has gifted the world with a secret formula for eternal life. After a series of numbers contrasting the power of love with the Emperor’s dehumanizing militarism, the opera's climax arrives with the confrontation between nostalgia for a peaceful past and current brutality, and a "mad scene" for the Emperor, counting his bombs and cannons. Death appears, announcing himself as a as a bringer of freedom and redemption. The Emperor sings his farewell as Death leads him away, and the ensemble pays homage to Death as the liberator from all suffering. These final ten minutes of utterly superb late-romantic music tragically sum up the magnitude of the loss suffered by civilization that resulted from the crimes of the Nazis. This is the music that Ullmann wanted to write, had the vision and technique to write, could have spent a long, productive career writing. Instead, it is his farewell. Juliana Zara (soprano), Christel Loetzsch (mezzo), Johannes Chum (tenor), Adrian Eröd (baritone), Munich Radio Orchestra; Patrick Hahn.