“Simon Stone’s best opera production.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

 

The line between dream and reality increasingly dissolves as Paul, mourning his dead wife Marie, meets the dancer Marietta. With her looks so similar to Marie’s, Marietta becomes the object of projection of Paul’s erotic desires. Following a nerve-racking “vision” with cathartic effect, Paul is finally reeled back to reality. He can leave behind the Belgian city of Bruges as the place of his death cult. The original title of the piece, “Triumph des Lebens” (Triumph of Life), is symbolic of the main character’s personal development.

 

None other than Giacomo Puccini himself described Erich Wolfgang Korngold, only 23 at the time, as the “greatest hope of new German music”. Because of their melodic urgency, arias such as “Glück, das mir verblieb” (Marietta’s Lute Song) and “Mein Sehnen, mein Wähnen” (Pierrot’s Song) have found a home among the concert repertoires of numerous opera singers and radiate far beyond the fame of Die tote Stadt.

With the collaboration of Naxos.