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muckefuckOh, here's another bizarre twist in the odyssey of Viktor Ullmann's works from Theresienstadt to Chicago that was left out in the short work history ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bunj linked to, but is touched on in this much longer account, which unfortunately omits one of the most intriguing details: The only reason we have the opera at all is because of a librarian.
Ullmann composed twenty works in Theresienstadt. Shortly before he was transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau, he intrusted them to the person among his sympathetic acquaintances with the greatest chance of survival: Hans Adler, the camp librarian. Ullmann reasoned that the Nazis would be unlikely to kill Adler, since he did so much of the bookkeeping for them. Fortunately, he was correct. Adler emigrated to London in 1947, but the manuscript for Der Kaiser von Atlantis sat in an attic for almost thirty years until being dusted off by conductor Kerry Woodward and premiered in Amsterdam in 1975.
(My dry, ironic laugh of relief commingled with a suppressed desire to weep and whirling in my head at the absurdity of existence has seldom gotten as much of a workout as it did during the post-performance discussion. Just wait until you read about the Cultural League of German Jews.)
bunj linked to, but is touched on in this much longer account, which unfortunately omits one of the most intriguing details: The only reason we have the opera at all is because of a librarian.Ullmann composed twenty works in Theresienstadt. Shortly before he was transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau, he intrusted them to the person among his sympathetic acquaintances with the greatest chance of survival: Hans Adler, the camp librarian. Ullmann reasoned that the Nazis would be unlikely to kill Adler, since he did so much of the bookkeeping for them. Fortunately, he was correct. Adler emigrated to London in 1947, but the manuscript for Der Kaiser von Atlantis sat in an attic for almost thirty years until being dusted off by conductor Kerry Woodward and premiered in Amsterdam in 1975.
(My dry, ironic laugh of relief commingled with a suppressed desire to weep and whirling in my head at the absurdity of existence has seldom gotten as much of a workout as it did during the post-performance discussion. Just wait until you read about the Cultural League of German Jews.)