Schreker, Franz

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Schreker, Franz

Irrelohe (with German libretto)

SKU: 2053 Category:

70,00 

Franz Schreker

Irrelohe (1919-22)
Opera in three acts on a libretto by the composer

(b. Monaco, 23 March 1878 – d. Berlin, 21 March 1934)

Preface
On 25 March 1919 Franz Schreker, the leading German opera composer of his generation following the premières of Der ferne Klang (1912) and Die Gezeichneten (1918), found himself on a train from Dresden to Nuremberg, where the latter opera was to receive a new production. In mid-journey he was wakened from a reverie as the conductor called out the name “Irrenlohe” (a little railway station in rural Bavaria that still exists today). Mistaking the name for “Irrelohe,” he was fascinated by the word’s multiple connotations: “lohe,” an ancient German term for a woodland clearing, had since come to signify a raging fire (hence the figure of Loge in Wagner’s Ring), and “irre” meant mad or wayward. The plot of a new opera immediately began to take shape in his imagination. A year later he reported the event in an article for the Viennese periodical Musikblätter des Anbruch (vol. 2, no. 16, p. 549):

“I had just finished the score of Schatzgräber and my thoughts were dwelling dreamily upon new dramatic plans. The train stopped. It seemed to me as if the conductor called the name ‘Irrelohe.’ Quite distinctly. And I looked out and made out the station name of the place, which was indeed called Irrelohe. It was then clear to me that this name, about whose no doubt prosaic etymology I had no wish to inquire, carried the seeds of a drama within it. And so it was. The opera on which I am now working bears the name; the libretto was finished in three days. Irrelohe – flames of madness.”

 

Read full preface / Komplettes Vorwort lesen > HERE

Score No.

2053

Edition

Opera Explorer

Genre

Opera

Size

225 x 320 mm

Printing

Reprint

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