Ballet: KaiserRequiem

Währinger Strasse 78

1090 Wien

 

In German and Latin with German and English surtitles

Emperor Overall rules as a tyrant over Atlantis. When he finally declares war of all against all, Death decides to stop his work. In an act of populist demagoguery, the emperor presents himself as the inventor of immortality. But without death, the country descends into chaos. The emperor must realize that his power has been broken.

In the face of persecution and extermination by the National Socialists, Viktor Ullmann composed with his Emperor of Atlantis in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1943/44, a shocking symbol against inhuman warmongering and totalitarian power structures. In October 1944 he - like his co-librettist Peter Kien - was deported to Auschwitz on the so-called “artist transport” and murdered. Alternating between contemporary opera, mystery play and dance of death, The Emperor of Atlantis unfolds a unique theatrical sound world.

For the premiere KaiserRequiem, conductor Omer Meir Wellber created an unusual interweaving of Ullmann's almost sixty-minute chamber opera with perhaps the most famous torso in music history: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's musical legacy, the Requiem in D minor KV 626 - composed in 1791 in the face of his own death and by death torn. KaiserRequiem is a dialogue between these two works about the big questions of being human. KaiserRequiem is also a collaboration between all departments of the house: the dancers of the Vienna State Ballet, soloists and the choir and orchestra of the Vienna Volksoper, directed and choreographed by Andreas Heise.

(Source: volksoper.at)