Boston Symphony Brings Lush, Rarely Heard Korngold Opera to the Concert Stage

It isn't quite accurate to say that Erich Wolfgang Korngold's "Die Tote Stadt" is a lost opera – this rich, dynamic work has been recorded a number of times and received numerous performances since it premiered a little more than a century ago. But after an initial flurry of attention, it all but disappeared from opera stages; only in recent years has it been performed, most recently in a celebrated 2020 production by the Bavarian State Opera that starred superstar tenor Jonas Kaufmann that was conducted by Kirill Petrenko.

Performances in the United States have been rare. The Metropolitan Opera brought it to New York in 1921 after its celebrated premiere in two German opera houses on the same night the year before, but it fell out of the Met's repertory two years later and hasn't been performed there since. In the early 1970s, the New York City Opera presented a celebrated production, and a number of American companies have presented it over the years, but it remains largely unknown.

Boston audiences will have the opportunity to hear it this week when the Boston Symphony Orchestra (in conjunction with Boston Lyric Opera) present two performances of the rarely-heard work under Music Director Andris Nelsons on Thursday, January 30 and Saturday, February 1 at Symphony Hall. The concert production features acclaimed soprano Christine Goerke in the difficult dual roles of Marie/Marietta and tenor David Butt Philip (subbing for Brandon Jovanovich, who withdrew because of illness) as the opera's protagonist, Paul.

There are numerous historical and cultural factors as to why the work remains obscure, but one main one is that is focuses on grief, not the most compelling subject for the opera stage. Paul, its protagonist, is left emotionally paralyzed after the death of his wife Marie; rather than move on, he has created a shrine to her in his home and spends his days wandering Bruges, the so-called "dead" city of the opera's title, due to its strong medieval character. Paul finds hope when he discovers Marie's doppelgänger – a dancer named Marietta, whom he brings home with plans of remaking her. Marietta, though, is nothing like the sedate Marie and, in an extended dream sequence that makes up a good deal of the opera, they clash and he murders her. If there's a popular cultural equivalent of "Die Tote Stadt," it is Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 dark thriller "Vertigo" with James Stewart as a private detective obsessed with the memory of Kim Novak, a troubled woman who dies under his care. When he discovers her double, he attempts to make her over, with tragic results.

At face value, the subject of grief seems an odd subject for the 23-year-old Korngold, a child prodigy writing his first full-length opera. The opera's source is a cult Symbolist novel by the Flemish author Georges Rodenbach that was adapted into a play by Siegfried Trebitschthat, who was a friend to Julius Korngold, Erich's father and a leading Viennese music critic. Trebitschthat suggested that that the Korngolds turn his play into an opera, and the young composer seized the opportunity, working with his father (under the pseudonym of Paul Schlott) to write the libretto. His finished opera was something of a sensation, no doubt in part due to then-present collective trauma brought on by the dual catastrophes of the First World War and the flu epidemic that crippled the world when the opera was at the height of its popularity. Grief was in the air, and Korngold captured it.

But "Die Tote Stadt's" popularity was short-lived. By the end of the 1920s, Korngold's lush style was falling our of favor as classical music embraced Modernism with Twelve-tone music and jazz became a force. Moreover, being Jewish, Korngold found his music banned by the Nazis. He fled to America, settling in Hollywood, where he found lucrative work writing film scores. At the time, sound films were less than 10 years old and Korngold proved instrumental in shaping what was to be the orchestral style of film music that continued throughout the century and reached its apex in the scores of John Williams. Korngold's name became synonymous with swashbuckling epics starring Errol Flynn ("Captain Blood," "The Sea Hawk," and "The Adventures of Robin Hood," for which he won one of his two Oscars. The other was for "Anthony Adverse.")