Community Corner

See Ullman's Grand Allegory Opera The Emperor of Atlantis

An opportunity to experience eminent composer Viktor Ullman’s allegory opera “The Emperor of Atlantis” (Der Kaiser von Atlantis) in a live, fully-staged production will take place Jan. 26 at 3 p.m.

That's when the Connecticut Lyric Opera and the Connecticut Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra will come to Middletown’s 700-seat state-of-the-art MHS Performing Arts Center, 200 LaRosa Lane.

The Greater Middletown Concert Association is bringing this opera as the second in its three-opera series. Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly,” the third opera, will conclude the 2013-2014 Opera Series May 23, at 7:30 p.m. “The Emperor of Atlantis” is also being performed this season in Chicago, Philadelphia and Vienna, Austria.   

The music of “The Emperor of Atlantis” was composed in 1942 by Ullman in the Nazi concentration camp of Theresienstadt where he was an inmate along with Peter Kien, who wrote the libretto.

Theresienstadt was a model camp at which there were many artists and musicians, and the Nazi administration paraded them and their special treatment for the benefit of the Red Cross inspectors at that time.

Rehearsals for the four scenes of “The Emperor of Atlantis” proceeded at the camp in the summer of 1944, but they were halted when the Nazi administration there concluded that the Emperor in the opera was being satirized too much in the allegorical tale to resemble Hitler.

In the opera the Emperor Overall decrees death for everyone via wars and other lifestyle situations. Death is a character in the opera, and he resents the emperor taking over his domain and declares that furthermore there will be no death at all. The consequences of life without death eventually weighs on the Emperor and he gives into Death’s demand that he himself should be the first to experience the “new “death.

This enables a return to normalcy for his grateful subjects who had been in a state of limbo.     

Ullman and many of the singers and musicians that rehearsed “The Emperor of Atlantis” were transported to Auschwitz shortly after in that October of 1944 and died there.

However, Ullman had entrusted the manuscript to Theresienstadt’s librarian, also an inmate, who survived and smuggled it out of the camp enabling it to be performed at many world locations. The opera is in German with English translation titles projected above the stage.    
 
Tickets are $40 (front) and $35 (rear). There is also a student price. Call 860 347-4887 or 860 347-6016 for tickets and further information. All major credit cards are accepted. The e-mail is bmwa@aol.com  and the website is www.GreaterMiddletownConcerts.org.

Checks for tickets may also be sent to: GMCA, PO Box 2622, Middletown, CT 06457.


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