The condemnation of Lucullus

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Opera dates
Title: The condemnation of Lucullus
Banners after the Republic Day 1969: poster for The Condemnation of Lucullus next to a picture by Walter Ulbricht

Banners after the Republic Day 1969:
poster for The Condemnation of Lucullus next to a picture by Walter Ulbricht

Shape: Opera in twelve scenes
Original language: German
Music: Paul Dessau
Libretto : Bertolt Brecht
Literary source: Bertolt Brecht: radio play The interrogation of Lukullus
Premiere: 1) March 17, 1951
2) October 12, 1951
Place of premiere: German State Opera Berlin , Admiralspalast
Playing time: about 100 minutes
Place and time of the action: Rome and in the realm of shadows, antiquity (about 56 BC)
people
  • Lukullus , Roman general ( hero tenor )
  • Frieze shapes:
    • The king ( bass )
    • The Queen ( soprano )
    • Two children (2 sopranos, children's voices)
    • Two legionaries (2 basses)
    • Lasus, cook of Lucullus (tenor)
    • The cherry tree bearer (tenor)
  • Death judges:
    • The fish woman ( old )
    • The courtesan ( mezzo-soprano )
    • The teacher (tenor)
    • The baker (tenor)
    • The farmer (bass)
  • Tertullia, an old woman (mezzo-soprano or alto)
  • Three female voices (3 sopranos in the orchestra)
  • Voices of the three callers (3 sopranos on stage)
  • The Judge of the Dead (high bass)
  • A female commentary (soprano in the orchestra)
  • Speaker of the Court of the Dead ( speaking role )
  • Two shadows (2 bass)
  • Five officers (3 tenors, 2 baritones )
  • School class teacher (tenor)
  • Three town criers, two young girls, two merchants, two women, two plebeians, a coachman (speaking roles)
  • Crowd, slaves, shadows, fallen legionaries ( mixed choir , male choir )
  • Children ( children's choir )

The Condemnation of Lucullus is an opera in twelve scenes by Paul Dessau (music) with a libretto by Bertolt Brecht . It is an operatic version of Brecht's radio play The Interrogation of Lucullus . The first version was premiered on March 17, 1951 in the temporary Admiralspalast of the German State Opera Berlin as a closed event. The revised second version was played there for the first time on October 12 of the same year in the regular program.

action

I. The funeral procession. Criers proclaim the death of the Roman general Lukullus , who "conquered the east, who overthrew seven kings, who filled our city of Rome with riches". The funeral procession through the street attracts the people. Soldiers wear the catafalque and slaves wear a frieze depicting their deeds. Some people from the people comment on Lucullus' successes. Not all of them see it exclusively as positive - others talk indifferently about everyday things. Then everyone goes back to their usual work.

II. The funeral. A “female commentary” announces that the deceased will be buried in a small rotunda on the Via Appia. The frieze is placed in front of the tomb. The soldiers leave on command.

III. Farewell to the living. Some officers laconically say goodbye to the deceased ("Servus, Lakalles, we are even, old man"), only to turn to their amusements in the wine house, in the brothel or at the dog race.

IV. In the reading books. After Lukullus became history, teachers show the schoolchildren his grave. The children must learn by heart the deeds of the great conquerors in order to be able to emulate them.

V. The reception. At the entrance to the realm of shadows, Lukullus waits impatiently to be admitted. He misses the delicious dishes made by his chef Lasus. His complaints are ignored. Old Tertullia explains to him that like everyone else he has to wait for his turn. For each deceased, the test of whether he will come to “dark Hades” or “the realms of the blessed” takes different lengths of time: “They give the most for the benefit of a person.” Tertullia is invited in. A little later it is also “Lakalles” turn - to his annoyance, the callers use his name in the “despised language of the suburbs”.

VI. Choice of advocate. In addition to the judge of the dead, the court consists of the spokesman for the judge of the dead and five lay judges who were farmers, teacher-slaves, fishwives, bakers and courtesans during their lifetime and who now conduct the investigation without a bribe without hands or mouths. Lucullus has to explain whether his life has benefited or harmed people. He may elect an advocate to defend himself. Alexander the Great , whom he called up, is not known in the realms of the blessed, since the deeds of the great are not recorded here. Nothing is known about Lukullus' own deeds either. He therefore suggests bringing the frieze with the images. The judge of the dead allows him to be brought in by the slaves - for them the step from the world into the realm of the dead is only small.

VII. Creation of the frieze. The slaves drag in the frieze without grumbling. Having become curious, the lay judges summoned the depicted people from the realm of the dead, whom they wanted to hear personally as witnesses. Lukullus' contradiction is ignored. The shadows of the "victims of the general Lakalles from the Asian campaigns" emerge.

VIII. The interrogation. Lukullus refuses to accept the statements of his former enemies. A king defeated by him, whose kingdom was destroyed, and a queen raped by his people accuse him. The teacher and courtesan show compassion for the victims. The teacher urges the lay judges to rise “in praise of those who defended their cities”. When Lucullus indicates that he was sent from Rome, the teacher asks who Rome is. “Was it the tailors and the furriers and the weavers and the sheep shearers who clothe it?” Two children show on a board the names of the 53 cities that were subjected to Rome - nothing more was left of them, although 250,000 children once lived in them. The judge of the dead orders a break, since Lukullus is exhausted.

IX. Rome again. During the break in negotiations, Lukullus overhears two newly arrived shadows who are talking about the poor living conditions of the Roman population. The economy was ruined by the many slaves.

X. The interrogation continues. The former fishwife also comes from Rome. She wanted to know from Lucullus what happened to the gold he had brought in, because she hadn't noticed anything about it. Instead of giving people something, he took their sons from them. Two legionnaires who died in the war say that they became soldiers because they had nothing to eat in Rome. Lukullus objects: “How should they judge the war if they don't understand it!” The fishwife's harrowing report about her search for her son Faber, who also perished in the Asian War, convinced the judge of the dead that she “understood” the war.

XI. The interrogation continues. The judge of the dead points out to Lucullus that his triumphs here bring nothing good to light about him. He should rather remember his weaknesses. These may have left “gaps in the chain” of his acts of violence. The baker wants to know why a cook with a fish is depicted on the frieze. The chef's shadow replies that his kitchen with the dish “lamb à la Lukullus” became famous “from Syria to Pontus” through his participation. Because Lukullus allowed him to cook “to his heart's content” and become an artist, he should be called “human”. The other lay judges remain unimpressed. The farmer asks another shadow of the frieze, a cherry tree bearer. He reports that Lakalles planted an Asian cherry tree on the slopes of the Apennines . The farmer considers this to be "probably the most beautiful of all trophies", because "this tribe is alive [...] when all the victories from both Asia have long since rotted away."

XII. The judgment. The other aldermen are outraged that the farmer and baker have found something positive in Lukullus. The teacher thinks that one man would have been enough to conquer a cherry tree. But Lukullus sent 80,000 people to their deaths. Everyone agrees on the verdict first proposed by the courtesan, which the fallen legionnaires and the Friesschlepper slaves also agree with: "Into nowhere with him and into nowhere with everyone like him!"

layout

orchestra

The orchestral line-up for the opera includes the following instruments:

music

Paul Dessau's composition is based on Bertolt Brecht's aesthetic concept of breaking away from the total work of art of Richard Wagner and allowing the various arts to interact independently. The music serves to "comment, contrast, illuminate" the text. The sound is hard and avoids any emotionality. Dessau bypasses the operatic style that Brecht despises as “culinary”. There is no flowing sound of strings. As a result, Dessau also dispenses with the usual violins, oboes, clarinets, bassoons and horns in the orchestra. Instead there is an oversized drum section with ten players. Formally, it is a number opera. Different groups of instrumentalists are used in the individual music numbers so that the sound can be heard through chamber music. The full orchestra only comes together in the finale, where the “impression of a world judgment” arises.

Dessau also treats the vocal parts in different ways. The role of the impatient and uncontrolled Lukullus is characterized by an overturning voice, word repetitions, wrong accentuation and harsh coloratura. He is accompanied by trumpets and timpani, the baroque attributes of his princely status, but whose sound is distorted. The music of the lay judges and the fishwife is kept simple and song-like. You therefore seem more human. The queen is assigned a coloratura aria, which gives a hint of her former high rank to the melody and instrumental accompaniment (harp, prepared piano, marimbaphone and xylophone). The music of the cook and the cherry tree bearer almost seems “baroque”.

The various speakers, crierers and commentators, whose text is addressed directly to the listener, form a further level. Through caesuras between the individual scenes of the process, the audience is given the opportunity to participate in the formation of judgments and to form their own thoughts.

The most famous piece of the opera is the "Lament of the Fish Woman" over the death of her son, who stands for the death of many sons in the war. The son not only loses his life, but also his name (Faber) in the crowd of the dead. The mother therefore searches in vain for him in the realm of shadows. Only the calling third remains of their love . A general pause describes their collapse. The ensuing recovery takes place over nine bars, in which chromatic tensions arise and fade until the section ends in a C major chord. Only the commenting female voice recognizes the mother's emotional situation (“Look, the lay judge is relaxed”). This commentator is the real opponent of Lucullus.

Brecht's text provides for “silence” several times in the fifth scene when the Lukullus is received. Dessau realizes these with flageolet tones of the divided cellos and double basses and an ambiguous harmony - a reference to the ancient harmony of the spheres .

The appearance of the witnesses in the seventh scene is accompanied by Dessau with a choir and a funeral march based on musical material from Johann Sebastian Bach's cantata No. 85 I Am a Good Shepherd .

Dessau repeatedly uses the number three and its multiple: There are a total of twelve scenes. In the sixth scene, Alexander the Great, chosen by Lukullus as advocate, is called three times by the overlapping voices of the three callers (an allusion to the three ladies from the Magic Flute ), so that his name is heard a total of nine times. This point acts as the “fulcrum” of the opera, as Alexander's silence leads to the victims of Lukullus appearing as witnesses in the trial.

The final verdict (“Into nowhere with him!”) Is not pronounced by the judge, but first by the courtesan, a deeply despised figure who, however, had shown particular sympathy in the course of the hearing. Dessau deposited the announcement of the verdict with howling trautonium sounds. In the orchestral aftermath, the SED party abbreviation is heard in the form of the tone letters Es – E – D , but Dessau wrote “Seid einig, Deutsche!” On the edge of the score.

Work history

When the German troops marched into Poland in 1939, Bertolt Brecht , who was living in exile in Sweden , decided to write the radio play Das Verhör des Lukullus with the writer Margarete Steffin . It was broadcast for the first time on May 12, 1940 by the Bern radio station Beromünster without music, after the originally planned Stockholm radio had withdrawn from the project. The Swedish composer Hilding Rosenberg , who was supposed to compose the radio play music, had also canceled.

A first opera based on an American translation of this text was written by the American composer Roger Sessions at the suggestion of Heinrich Schnitzler and with Brecht's consent, under the title The Trial of Lucullus. It premiered on April 18, 1947 at the University of California at Berkeley, but did not achieve lasting effects.

In 1949 Brecht created a second radio play version together with Paul Dessau for the North German Radio. However, it was not performed. At the same time, work began on an opera version. An attempt to win the composer Igor Stravinsky through Dessau's mediation failed. Then Dessau began to work itself. Brecht published the text of the second radio play version in 1949 in issue 11 of the experiments as “25. Attempt". Under the impression of the Nuremberg trials , he replaced the closing words of the originally open end (“The court withdraws to deliberate”) with the verdict “Into nothing with him”. Dessau created the composition in close contact with Brecht, who now lived in Berlin again. Of the fourteen scenes in the first version, he completed twelve within three weeks. Unlike Sessions, he did not adopt Brecht's dramaturgy concept, which had provided for a dialogue opera, but instead implemented various changes. He finished the work on December 12, 1949. Ernst Legal , the director of the State Opera, submitted the libretto to the Ministry of Public Education in February 1950 and received permission to perform it two months later. During the rehearsal work, however, the ministry asked for a look at the score - a “bad omen” for Brecht.

The first performance of this version, which is also known as the radio play Das Verhör des Lukullus , took place - after a preview on March 13 - on March 17, 1951 under the musical direction of Hermann Scherchen in the temporary Admiralspalast of the German State Opera Berlin . Directed by Wolf Völker . The stage design came from Caspar Neher . Alfred Hülgert sang the title role. The other actors were Otto Hopf (king), Margot Haunstein (queen), Paul Schmidtmann (Lasus), Heinz Friedrich (cherry tree carrier), Karola Goerlich (fish woman), Diana Eustrati (courtesan), Gerhard Wittig (teacher), Heinz Braun (baker ), Walter Großmann (farmer), Gertraud Prenzlow (Tertullia), Willy Heyer-Krämer (judge of the dead) and Fritz Soot (spokesman for the judge of the dead). It was a closed event for the East German Ministry of Education, which was often referred to in literature as a “trial performance”.

However, the audience was not intimidated. Despite the occasional whistle that was expected from the invited FdJ members, the performance was a huge success. However, there were heated public discussions after the preview. At a meeting of the Central Committee of the SED from 15. – 17. March on the topic of “Fight against formalism in art and literature”, in which the functionaries called on the artists to “simplicity” and “folklore”, Dessau's music was particularly criticized:

“The music of the opera 'Das Verhör des Lukullus' is also an example of formalism. It is mostly inharmonious, has a lot of drums and also creates confusion of taste. Such music, which confuses people, cannot raise the consciousness of the working people, but objectively helps those who have an interest in people's confusion. But these are the bellicose enemies of mankind. "

- Hans Lauter : The fight against formalism in art and literature, for a progressive German culture. Berlin 1951

Ulrich Schreiber compared this intensified formalism dispute with the often fatal political show trials of Stalinism . The “working people” themselves have valued the work since its premiere, as reports show. One of the most important advocates was President Wilhelm Pieck . On March 24th there was a discussion between the authors and Pieck, Otto Grotewohl , Paul Wandel , Hans Lauter and Anton Ackermann , during which a revision was recommended. Brecht and Dessau evaluated the points of criticism and created a new version with only twelve scenes. With the teacher's aria "Rome, Rome, who is Rome?", The report of the attacked king (8th scene) and the chorus of the fallen legionnaires (12th scene), the text was more clearly directed against wars of aggression than wars of defense. In addition to the historical references to antiquity and the Nuremberg Trials, this also created a connection to the present, since, according to GDR propaganda, the Adenauer government and the “imperialist” West were planning a war of conquest. Ernst Krause's opera guide, published in the GDR, stated that these changes were "caused by new worrying signs of the times".

After another conversation with Pieck, the second version was included in the repertoire of the German State Opera on May 5 and played there for the first time on October 12, 1951 under the title The Condemnation of Lukullus . The cast remained the same as in the "rehearsal".

The Condemnation of Lucullus is Paul Dessau's most frequently performed opera. It became the starting point for operas in the GDR and, after the Leipzig production in 1957, also gained international fame. In 1992 it had already been staged in fifty productions, including repeatedly in the Berlin State Opera. There were five rehearsals by Dessau's wife Ruth Berghaus alone , including 1960, 1965 and 1983. For the 1960 production, Dessau deleted the “cookbook aria” and revised the legionnaire's choir of the 12th scene. Also in 1960, Dessau and Elisabeth Hauptmann revised the text one more time. Changes affect the previously continuous parts of the commenting female voice and the speaker of the judge of the dead, which were partly replaced by an anonymous voice and partly assigned to the judge of the dead. In addition, Dessau removed the choir "Oh, look, you can build a monument for yourself" (7th scene). This version was not included in the vocal score of 1961, but became the basis for later printed editions of the opera. Since the piano reduction was also edited by Dessau himself and contains all of the musical numbers, according to Sigrid Neef , it must be "considered an authentic version today".

Important productions were:

  • January 30, 1952: Frankfurt am Main; first West German performance, first version; Conductor: Scherchen, Lukullus: Helmut Melchert
  • 1953: Florence
  • 1953: London
  • 1957: Leipzig; with simplified dialogues and conversations, according to Dessau "actually the 5th version"; Conductor: Helmut Seydelmann ; Lukullus: Ferdinand Brügmann; the production was shown in 1958 with great success in the Theater of Nations in Paris
  • 1968: Nuremberg; Conductor: Hans Gierster
  • 1969: Cambridge
  • 1970: Oldenburg
  • 1972: Darmstadt
  • 1973: Milan, Teatro Lirico; Director: Giorgio Strehler
  • 1975: Heidelberg
  • 1982: Gelsenkirchen
  • 1994: Essen; Director: Dietrich Hilsdorf
  • 2007/2008: Komische Oper Berlin ; Conductor: Eberhard Kloke

Recordings

literature

Web links

Commons : The Condemnation of Lucullus  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d The condemnation of Lucullus. In: Ernst Krause : Oper A – Z. An opera guide. 6th edition. VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1981, ISBN 3-370-00148-9 , pp. 67-71.
  2. a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Eberhard Schmidt: The condemnation of Lukullus. In: Piper's Encyclopedia of Musical Theater . Volume 1: Works. Abbatini - Donizetti. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1986, ISBN 3-492-02411-4 , pp. 714-716.
  3. a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x Sigrid Neef : German Opera in the 20th Century - GDR 1949–1989. Lang, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-86032-011-4 , pp. 65-79.
  4. a b Fritz HennenbergCondemnation of Lukullus, The. In: Grove Music Online (English; subscription required).
  5. a b c The condemnation of Lucullus. In: Peter Czerny : Opera book. Henschelverlag Art and Society, Berlin 1981, pp. 423–425.
  6. a b c d e f g h Ulrich Schreiber : Opera guide for advanced learners. 20th Century II. German and Italian Opera after 1945, France, Great Britain. Bärenreiter, Kassel 2005, ISBN 3-7618-1437-2 , pp. 54–59.
  7. a b c Fritz Hennenberg : Supplement to the CD Berlin Classics BC 1073-2.
  8. a b c d Paul Dessau. In: Andreas Ommer: Directory of all complete opera recordings (= Zeno.org . Volume 20). Directmedia, Berlin 2005.
  9. Sigrid Neef : Opera in the GDR - open work of art with closed borders - a farce right at the beginning. In: Udo Bermbach (Ed.): Opera in the 20th century. Development tendencies and composers. Metzler, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-476-01733-8 , p. 237.
  10. The Condemnation of Lucullus. In: András Batta: Opera. Composers, works, performers. hfullmann, Königswinter 2009, ISBN 978-3-8331-2048-0 , pp. 118-119.
  11. a b c information on works and performances at Verlag Schott Music, accessed on October 15, 2018.