"Death, where is thy sting?" The Emperor of Atlantis

Opera Quarterly

Volumn 16, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 224-239

  Hutcheon, Linda ^a   Hutcheon, Michael ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0043099180     PISSN: 07360053     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/oq/16.2.224     Document Type: Review

References (41)

1. For information about the lives of the librettist and composer, see H. G. Adler, Theresienstadt 1941-1945: Das Antlitz einer Zwangsgemeinschaft: Geschichte, Soziologie, Psychologie (Tübingen: Mohr, 1955)
2. Max Bloch, "Viktor Ullmann: A Brief Biography and Appreciation," Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute, vol. 3, no. 2 (October 1979), pp. 150-77
3. Zdenek Lederer, Ghetto Theresienstadt (New York: Howard Fertig, 1983)
4. Ingo Schultz, "Viktor Ullmann," in Flensburger Hefte: Anthroposophen in der Zeit des deutschen Faschismus: zur Verschwörungsthese (Flensburger: Flensburger Hefte Verlag, 1991), pp. 5-26
5. For more on Theresienstadt in general and especially cultural life in it, see Adler, Theresienstadt 1941-1945, chap. 19
6. George E. Berkeley, Hitler's Gift: The Story of Theresienstadt (Boston: Branden, 1993)
7. Joža Karas, Music in Terezín 1941-1945 (New York: Beaufort Books, 1985)
8. Lederer, Ghetto Theresienstadt
9. Schultz, "Viktor Ullmann," and "Viktor Ullmann und seine Musikkritiken: über einen kritischen Begleiter des Theresienstädter Musiklebens," in Ingo Schultz, ed., Viktor Ullmann: 26 Kritiken über musikalische Veranstaltungen in Theresienstadt (Hamburg: von Bockel, 1993), pp. 9-32
10. the book of collected testimonials called Terezín (Prague: Council of Jewish Communities in the Czech Lands, 1965)
11. See, e.g., Harold Rosenthal's review of a BBC 2 showing of a filmed production in 1979, in Opera, vol. 30, no. 5 (May 1979), pp. 501-2
12. Vladimir Karbusicky, in "Der Traum von der menschlichen Ohnmacht des Diktators: zum Stoff des 'Kaiser von Atlantis' Viktor Ullmanns," Musica, vol. 47, no. 5 (September/October 1993), p. 272, argues that the opera deserves to be remembered for more than its conditions of composition
13. For a dissenting view, that the opera would not have survived on musical grounds alone without that context to validate it, see Dana Mack, "Art Behind Barbed Wire," The New Criterion, vol. 8, no. 1 (September 1989), p. 57
14. See Bloch, "Viktor Ullmann," p. 150
15. The music Ullmann wrote while in the camp is the first to use Hebrew folk songs, for example. See the review of the recording of his Second Symphony by Peter Franklin, in The Musical Times, vol. 134, no. 1806 (August 1993), p. 468
16. Cited in Vladimír Karbusicky, "Sen o Lidské Bezmoci Diktátor," Hudební Věda, vol. 30, nol. 2 (1993), p. 105
17. and Schultz, "Viktor Ullmann," pp. 17-18
18. For more on this opera, see Joe Pearce, "Brundibár at Theresienstadt: A People's Struggle to Maintain a Level of Musical Culture in the Face of Imminent Peril," The Opera Quarterly, vol. 10, no. 4 (1994), pp. 39-50
19. Cited in Ingo Schultz, "Viktor Ullmann (1898-1944)," Hudební Věda, vol. 30, no. 1 (1993), p. 8
20. See survivor Thomas Mandl's remarks on resistance in Schultz's "Viktor Ullmann und seine Musikkritiken," pp. 7-8
21. See Karel Berman, "Memories," Terezín, p. 236
22. See Walter Gieseler, "Entartete Kunst - entartete Musik: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte und zur Wirkungsgeschichte des Wortes 'entartet,'" Zeitschrift für Musikpädagogik, vol. 22 (May 1983), pp. 17-26
23. Sander Gilman and J. Edward Chamberlin, conclusion to Degeneration: The Dark Side of Progress (New York: Columbia UP, 1985), pp. 290-93
24. Patrick Bade, "Art and Degeneration: Visual Icons of Corruption," in the same volume, pp. 224-26
25. Eric Trudgill, Madonnas and Magdalens: The Origins and Development of Victorian Sexual Attitudes (London: Heinemann, 1976), p. 243
26. Gilman and Chamberlin, Degeneration, pp. 291-92
27. For more on the opera itself, see Ingo Schultz, "Der verschüttete Lebensweg eines Musikers der geköptften Generation," Musica reanimata - Mitteilungen, vol. 4 (January 1993)
28. H. G. Klein, ed., Viktor Ullmann - Materialen (Hamburg: Verdränge Musik 1992), vol. 2
29. Karas, Music in Terezín, pp. 33-35
30. On a more modern note, Robert Kastenbaum, Psychology of Death, 2d ed. (New York: Springer, 1992), pp. 168-71, studied 240 adult responses to the question of how death was personified and noted four types: the macabre, the gentle comforter, the gay deceiver, and the automaton. By the end, if not at the start, Death here is certainly the "gentle comforter."
31. On Berg's general influence on Ullmann's work, see Ingo Schultz, "... ich bin schon lange ein begeisterter Verehrer ihres 'Wozzeck': Viktor Ullmann und Alban Berg," Musiktheorie, vol. 7, no. 2 (1992), pp. 113-28
32. See Victor Lange, "Introduction" to Georg Kaiser, Gas II, trans. Winifred Katzin (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1963), pp. xi-xii
33. Karbusický, "Sen o Lidské," p. 108
34. William Lloyd, review of Mecklenburgh Opera's production, The Musical Times, vol. 134, no. 1810 (December 1992), p. 722
35. Kastenbaum, Psychology of Death, pp. 50-57
36. See, for example, accounts in Jeffrey Joseph's review in Music and Musicians, vol. 27, no. 9 (May 1979), p. 36
37. Andreas K. W. Mayer's review in Musica, vol. 45, no. 4 (July/August 1991), pp. 239-42
38. and Mack, "Art Behind Barbed Wire," p. 57
39. See Alfred Frankenstein, "Israel: Visitors and Memories," Opera, vol. 33, no. 7 (July 1982), p. 745
40. Dori Laub, "Truth and Testimony," in Cathy Caruth, ed., Trauma: Explorations in Memory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), p. 65
41. Some want to see the echoing of European music here as a farewell to the world he loved. See Jean-Jacques Van Vlasselaer in Steven Mazey, "Opera Defied Concentration Camp Oppressors," Ottawa Citizen, 20 October 1996, p. C7