Schillings, Max von

Schillings, Max von – Mona Lisa

(b. Düren, April 19, 1868 – d. Berlin, July 24, 1933)

(Prelude, Act 1, Act 2, Postlude)

Premiere
September 26, 1915, at the Stuttgart State Theatre conducted by Schillings

German libretto by Beatrice Dovsky

Duration of the first performance
Approximately 2 hours and 15 minutes, including one 20-minute intermission

Instrumentation of the first performance
3 flutes, 1 piccolo, 3 oboes, 1 English horn, 1 heckelphone, 3 clarinets, 1 E-flat clarinet, 1 bass clarinet,
3 bassoons, 1 contrabassoon, 6 French horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, 1 tuba, timpani, percussion (chimes, glockenspiel, xylophone, castanets, triangle, bass drum, cymbals, tam tam, snare drum, field drum), 1 celesta,
1 organ, 1 mandolin, 2 harps, 22 violins, 8 violas, 8 cellos, 6 double-basses, chorus, 3 sopranos, 1 mezzo-soprano, 4 tenors, 1 baritone, and 3 bass-baritones.

Preface
On August 21, 1911, Vincenzo Peruggia, a Louvre glass worker, locked himself in a cabinet in the museum overnight and stole Leonardo da Vinci’s painting Mona Lisa. Stylized into a major event by the international press, the incident is accompanied by all sorts of uproar, borders are closed, and memorial services are held. Not least, Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire are summoned by the police as suspects. Two years later, the perpetrator, along with the painting, is captured quite unremarkably not far from the Louvre, and da Vinci’s masterpiece has thus definitively become the most famous painting in the world.

In 1913, still under the impression of the spectacle, the Viennese actress and writer Beatrice Dovsky writes a libretto that tells a bizarre, freely invented story about the creation of the myth surrounding the Mona Lisa’s enigmatic smile; a Mona Lisa fantasy, woven into a love triangle and a framing narrative set in the present time, playfully engaging with ideas of rebirth and the ‘eternal mystery of the feminine’.”

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