Fresh interpretation of anti-fascist opera
The Monash Academy of Performing Arts and IOpera present The Emperor of Atlantis. (Image courtesy of Christian Herrnbeck)
A rare performance of an opera created in a Nazi ghetto-prison will be presented at Monash University’s Faculty Gallery (Faculty of Art Design & Architecture), in conjunction with the Monash Academy of Performing Arts (MAPA), next month.
Award-winning theatre company IOpera will present five performances of ‘The Emperor of Atlantis’, which tells the story of a mythical death figure who goes on strike in the face of an emperor who mocks him by declaring total war. The production is supported by the Robert Salzer Foundation and the Goethe-Institut.
Image, text and music will combine to transform the gallery into a theatrical space exploring the extremes of political power and the absurdities of modern warfare.
There is a strong comic-surrealist and cabaret character to the opera, typical of the music in the period between the two world wars known as the Weimar Republic, which produced some of Germany’s finest and most innovative artists and intellectuals.
Director of MAPA, Dr Peter Tregear, who is also the Musical Director for the opera, said the work has an extraordinary and terrible history.
“The opera was created in 1943 in the Nazi ghetto-prison of Terezín (Theresienstadt),” Dr Tregear said.
“The composer, Viktor Ullmann, the librettist, Peter Kien, and most of the cast who were rehearsing it, were subsequently murdered in Auschwitz.
“Miraculously, the score - which is notable for passages of incisive satire as well as great beauty - survived, and the work finally received its premiere in 1975 in the Netherlands.”
German artist Christian Herrnbeck has conceived a series of photographic backdrop images for the production. Herrnbeck is renowned in Germany for his triptych depictions of Nazi ‘locations of terror’ and will be visiting Melbourne for the production.
A text collage created by stage director Gert Reifarth and music by award-winning Israeli composer Gilad Hochman introduces the opera's broader historical and cultural themes and its political and ethical scope, exploring the plight of Jewish artists like Ullmann and Kien in the Third Reich.
A free-standing exhibition of more of Herrnbeck’s work taken in Terezín accompanies the production in an adjacent gallery.
IOpera was established in 2007 by Dr Tregear and Gert Reifarth with the purpose of producing less-known and rarely performed works in Australia in a way that aims to demonstrate opera’s continuing relevance for contemporary society.
‘The Emperor of Atlantis’ will take place at 7.30pm from Tuesday 10 July to Saturday 14 July at the Faculty Gallery, Faculty of Art Design & Architecture, Monash University, Caulfield campus. Running time is 90 minutes (no interval).
Tickets can be purchased from the MAPA website. For more information about the production, visit the IOpera website.