The Golem (Opera)
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| Title: | The golem |
| Original title: | The golem |
| Original language: | German |
| Music: | Eugen d'Albert |
| Libretto : | Ferdinand Lion and Margit Labouchère |
| Premiere: | December 14, 1926 |
| Place of premiere: | Frankfurt |
| Playing time: | about 2 hours |
| Place and time of the action: | Prague, 1600 |
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The Golem is a musical drama in three acts by Eugen d'Albert . Ferdinand Lion wrote the libretto based on a drama by Arthur Holitscher . The opera premiered on December 14, 1926 at the Frankfurt Opera House .
action
first act
Rabbi Loew found the stone - the golem - and dug it up. This golem, which was buried by the Hebrews when they left Egypt, can be enlivened by magical practices. The rabbi and his disciple brought the stone into his house. After Lea, Loew's adopted daughter, has been sent away, the golem awakening procedure begins.
The rabbi is interrupted in his work by the unexpected visit of Emperor Rudolf II , who is accompanied by the astronomer Tycho Brahe . The monarch hopes to get answers to the last questions from the rabbi. At his request, the rabbi conjures up a vision - using a magic lantern -: the meeting of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba . The ruler does not recognize the hidden meaning of this vision and sets off again without being cured of his melancholy.
Loew can now complete his work: The golem is brought back to life. Rabbi Loew, however, far from bringing the spiritual message to bear that he represents, only wants to make him his famulus .
As a reward for his help in awakening the Golem, the disciple asks for Leah's hand, which he has never seen before. The rabbi agrees, but warns the disciple: Lea, a foundling, might not be Jewish, she is at the same time a child-woman and a super-woman, at the same time deeply attached to her surroundings and yet removed from the human world. The rabbi introduces his daughter to the disciple. Lea makes fun of the young man. Her attention is then drawn to that strange creature her father poses to her as a mute servant.
Rabbi Loew and the disciple leave the house. Lea, who cannot escape the golem's spell, tries to teach him the language. In fact, she succeeds, but the golem, who suffers from becoming human, takes refuge in the monotony of his work.
Second act
At the time of the Feast of Tabernacles , the rabbi laments God's silence in view of the perplexity of the community. He goes to the synagogue and leaves Leah and the Golem, who seems to have forgotten the language of the people, alone. The disciple is courting Leah by painting her the charm of a quiet and godly married life in tantalizing colors. But Lea, still fascinated by the golem, succeeds in having the disciple reveal the identity of the golem in exchange for a kiss, and then tries hard to send the disciple away.
At the sight of this scene the animal desire awakens in the golem. He, all body, feels attracted to Lea, all spirit, just as she is attracted to him. But his clumsy advances threaten to become rape, even murder. In her horror, the epileptic Lea suffers an epileptic fit. The golem, whose immobility reminds him of his own lifelessness when he rested on the ground, feels pity for Lea. This compassion gives him soul. The machine becomes animal, then human. He transforms just like Leah when she regains consciousness. They now form only one being in symbiosis: A fusion has taken place between Lea, who symbolically connects the German fate, and the golem, the projection of the Jewish people.
A group of Jews displaced from Spain, who wish to see Rabbi Loew, are received by the golem whom Leah told them to put on their father's clothes: the false leader of the community orders them to settle in their new refuge where he will protect them and where their exile is to come to an end.
When the rabbi returns, he notices that Lea and the golem have changed. He takes Lea away with him and orders the golem to return to his original bondage. The golem rebels against this callousness and threatens the city of Prague with destruction.
Third act
The rabbi fled Prague and took Lea to the Tycho Brahe observatory. But his frightened community also flows towards this place and gathers around it, while in the distance the devastated ghetto can be seen falling victim to the flames. Mothers and old men give in to horror, the girls to resignation, the young men of the ghetto prepare to fight against the monstrous.
In order to save those who once took her in as strangers, Lea lures the golem with her song and thus sacrifices him and herself. The two beings, reunited, forget the world around them. The rabbi celebrates the union of the two beings. Their amalgamation is fatal for the golem as well as for Lea. When the people tried to stone the golem, this messenger who evoked the memory of persecution and homelessness, the rabbi intervened: The golem was the guardian who reminded them of the conditions of human existence - exile. The rabbi returns the golem to the inertia of matter while the people move towards their fate.
literature
- The golem. Musical drama in three acts . Seal by Ferdinand Lion. Music by Eugen d'Albert. Universal-Edition, Vienna 1926, DNB 571691544
- Charlotte Pangels: Eugen d'Albert: wonder pianist and composer. A biography. Atlantis, Zurich / Freiburg i. Br. 1981, ISBN 3-7611-0595-9 .
- Michel Beretti: This stone should be a witness over us . In: Der Golem , Ulmer Theater 1988/89
Web links
- The Golem : Sheet Music and Audio Files in the International Music Score Library Project