Concentration-Camp Opera Revived In Berlin
“The Emperor from Atlantis” is a small operatic gem that was written under torturous circumstances and almost failed to see the light of day when its composer was dragged off to the gas chambers before being able to hear it performed. According to the Guardian: But it lives on thanks to a professor of philosophy who survived Theresienstadt concentration camp, where it was written, and who preserved the manuscript. Now a Berlin orchestra and an American conductor are to revive “The Emperor from Atlantis” by Czech-German composer Viktor Ullmann on a more than unusual stage – the former headquarters of the SS and Gestapo in the German capital, known as the Topography of Terror. “We wanted to reinforce the immediacy of the genocide of Ullmann and whole schools of composers of that time and this is a far more effective mise en scène than an opera house would be,” said John Axelrod, the US conductor who is leading the project.
Ullmann, who was Jewish and had been a pupil of the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg, wrote the operatic satire on Adolf Hitler knowing full well that it would lead to his death. The nature of its contents was not lost on the SS authorities of Theresienstadt, who soon after the final rehearsal of the work, in March 1944, deported Ullmann to Auschwitz, along with his librettist, Peter Kien, where he was murdered on 18 October aged 46.
