Ullmann, Viktor 

Ullmann, Viktor  – ‘Der zerbrochene Krug’ Op. 36 (full opera score with German libretto after the play by Heinrich von Kleist)

(b. Teschen, Austria-Hungary, 1 January 1898 – murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau, 18 October 1944)

(The Broken Jug)

Opera based on the play by Heinrich von Kleist

Preface
Victor Ullmann is regarded as one of the most significant composers of the interwar period in Prague. He was born on 1 January 1898 in Teschen, then part of Austria-Hungary, to Jewish parents who had converted to Catholicism before his birth. Although highly gifted musically, after completing his school-leaving exams he initially enlisted in the military, where he was deployed to the Isonzo Front. He used a sabbatical in 1918 not only to begin studying law, but also to take up musical studies at Schönberg’s Vienna Composition Seminar. When Alexander Zemlinsky, who had recognised the young man’s extraordinary talent, offered him the post of Kapellmeister at the ‘Neues Deutsches Theater’ in Prague, he abandoned his studies in 1919 and accepted the influential composer’s invitation. Between 1929 and 1931, Ullmann moved his base to Zurich, where he worked as a conductor at the Schauspielhaus and wrote stage music for the theatre’s current productions. In 1931, he opened an anthroposophical bookshop in Stuttgart, and his musical activities took a back seat; in 1933, he fled to Prague. He feared not only persecution by the Nazis because of his Jewish heritage, but was also under pressure from creditors to whom he had run up substantial debts to open his shop. Whilst Ullmann earned a living in Prague as a music teacher and journalist, he composed numerous works. He also took lessons from Alois Hába, the pioneer of quarter-tone music, though he ultimately could not really warm to Hába’s musical concepts. …

read more / weiterlesen … > HERE