Insane
| Work data | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Insane |
| Shape: | thoroughly composed |
| Original language: | German |
| Music: | Franz Schreker |
| Libretto : | Franz Schreker |
| Premiere: | March 27, 1924 |
| Place of premiere: | City theater in Cologne |
| Playing time: | 2:45 |
| Place and time of the action: | Irrelohe Castle in the 18th century |
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Irrelohe is an opera in three acts by Franz Schreker , who composed the music and wrote the libretto . The plot is close to the gothic novel by Edgar Allan Poe and ETA Hoffmann , and takes place in the 18th century in the castle and village of Irrelohe , an imaginary place whose name Schreker was inspired to name while passing through the Irrenlohe train station . The opera premiered in Cologne in 1924 .
action
A curse weighs on Irrelohe Castle: The sex of those of Irrelohe comes from the connection of a crazy man with a female water spirit . From this curse comes the day in the life of every Count Irrelohe when, inflamed with madness (Irrelohe), he rapes a woman and then sinks into madness and dies dead. Even the old count raped a girl from the village on his wedding day thirty years ago and went mad. His son, the young Count Heinrich, only lives in the world of books and rarely leaves the castle. The old innkeeper Lola - who was that girl - sings the same song every night. Her son Peter, who comes from the rape, is a loner, he only has contact with the forester's daughter Eva. The young count is also after Eva. The crazy musician Christobald, who was once engaged to Lola, sets a fire in the village every year. The plot revolves around the mystery of what happened thirty years ago.
Origin and performance
After completing the composition of the treasure digger in autumn 1918, Schreker turned to new opera projects. He was very impressed by the Egyptian and Greek Memnon mythology , especially in the depiction by Adolf Friedrich von Schack first published in 1885 . In the summer of 1919 he wrote a libretto, the plot of which is set in ancient Egypt. Shortly after completing this work, he wrote a second libretto in just three days, which he called Irrelohe : on the journey from Dresden to Nuremberg his train stopped at Irrenlohe station , and during the station announcement he heard Irrelohe : “Flaming madness!” Schreker completed it Composition from 1920 to 1922, the opera was first published in 1923.
The premiere took place on March 27, 1924 in the Stadttheater Cologne under the direction of Otto Klemperer , performances in seven other cities followed. The opera received mixed reviews and did not find a permanent place in the repertoire. The Bielefeld Opera performed Irrelohe in 1985, followed by the Vienna Volksoper (2004), the Bonn Opera (2010) and the Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern (2015).
literature
- Christopher Hailey: Franz Schreker. 1878-1934. A cultural biography. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1993, ISBN 0-521-39255-1 (Chapter 8: Irrelohe : a work at the crossroads in the Google book search).
- Ortiz, Janine: Fire must eat what flame gave birth - Franz Schreker's opera Irrelohe, Are-Musik-Verlag, Mainz 2008, ISBN 978-3-924522-29-2
Web links
- Plot from "Irrelohe" in Zazzerino
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Christopher Hailey: Franz Schreker, 1878-1934 . Cambridge 1993, p. 177.
- ↑ Irrelohe in the Vienna Volksoper
- ↑ Irrelohe at KulturPur , accessed on 5 February 2016th
- ↑ Information from the Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern