Attila Fekete – tenor Viktor Ullmann: The Emperor of Atlantis, or Death Abdicates One act opera, op. 49 – Hungarian premiere Budapest Festival Orchestra Conductor: Iván Fischer Attila Fekete graduated from the Academy of Music six years ago. He made his debut at the Hungarian State Opera House as Rudolfo in La Boheme before taking on the lead male roles of János Vajda’s Leonce and Lena, Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet and Giordano’s André Chénier. He made his debut with the Festival Orchestra i...n 2003 in Stravinsky’s Pulcinella. Composer and conductor Viktor Ullmann was born in Silesia in 1898. In Vienna he was a pupil of Schoenberg and later Zemlinsky’s assistant at the Prague Opera. He lived in Germany briefly but had to flee in 1933. He settled in Prague but in 1942 was deported by the Nazis to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. There were – for pure propaganda purposes – regular concerts and opera performances and while an inmate, Ullmann set about composing an opera based on a libretto by Petr Kien. The story concerns the emperor of Atlantis who so annoys death with his senseless brutality that Death goes on strike. The Emperor is delighted because he believes his soldiers are immortal. But when his army’s wounded are not relieved from their grievous suffering, he has to give in. Death stipulates strict conditions: the first victim must be the Emperor himself. The opera was banned before its planned premiere in October 1944. Ullmann was dispatched to Auschwitz and sent to the gas chamber. Hans Adler, who also was a prisoner at Theresienstadt, wrote a book in 1955 about the “model camp” but it was not until 1975 that it transpired he had succeeded in saving the score of Atlantis. Its world premiere finally took place on December 16th 1975 at the Amsterdam Bellevue Theatre.
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