The Dead City, Opera by E. W. Korngold
Already recognised as a child prodigy, The Dead City (Die tote Stadt) confirmed Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s wunderkind status. Premiered in two simultaneous performances at the Stadttheater in Hamburg and the Opernhaus in Cologne on 4 December 1920 when Korngold was just twenty-three years old, the opera became something of a cultural phenomenon, touring the world. For a time, Korngold was known as the Viennese Puccini.
Based on the Belgian symbolist Georges Rodenbach’s 1892 novel, Bruges-La-Morte, The Dead City is the tale of Paul, a man who cannot move on following the death of his wife, Marie. Having made his home a shrine to her memory, he encounters Marietta, an actress who is the spitting image of Marie. The story becomes a reverie in which Paul is unable to distinguish between illusion and reality. Torn between his attraction to his new lover and devotion to Marie, Paul commits murder. But is it all a dream?
Unapologetically romantic at a time when the twentieth century was moving in a decidedly different direction, Korngold’s talent for writing lush sweeping melodies on a grand scale drew the attention of Hollywood, leading to him winning the first Oscar awarded to a composer for his score for 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn and Claude Rains.
Listening to The Dead City, one can but marvel that someone so young could have created a work that wields such immense forces, vocal and instrumental, while also so effectively giving voice to the intimate psychological intensity of Rodenbach’s drama.
Recent years have seen a renewed interest in Korngold’s music. Now this wonderful opera makes its return to the Wiener Staatsoper, with the arias, Marietta’s Lied and Pierrot’s Tanzlied, in particular, guaranteed to ensure that there is not a dry eye in the house.