Daniel Ohlmann
“The game is a ritual, the companion of the constant question: what happens then?” The Emperor of Atlantis”overall death denies the Emperor dominates the world the service at the moment, as “this large, beneficent war of all against all” can announce. But death is no longer wants from overall, which has made of him a mass phenomenon, to the small artisan of dying”can be downgrade. Overalls apocalyptic destruction plant loses its meaning and he even his power. What is a war without death? “In this short Opera the figures of death and of Harlequin (life), the speaker (a pristine commentator) and drummer (the ironic alienated voice of power), the soldiers and his girl bobbed” and be the Emperor overall “winners of the action. Viktor Ullmann wrote the Emperor of Atlantis”as a prisoner in the concentration camp in Theresienstadt in 1943/44. in 1944 he and his librettist Peter were murdered the Kien in Auschwitz before the premiere so until 1975 took place in Amsterdam. Even today, the exciting work is impressive, and yet it is at the operas of our time listen to little more.
Reason enough for the Staatstheater Oldenburg it new perform. The set supports Ullmann’s question for meaning and dignity of dying during a cruel human oppression and contempt. In a country in which people have forgotten how to laugh, no one honors death more. So varying the moods of the two short operas, so different is its music, which intoned the State Orchestra conducted by Karl Prokopetz. It ranges from Weill and Puccini Jazz until modern times. Linda Samuel Sagan presents itself in the role of death and drummer for the first time the Oldenburg public. Peter Felix Bauer and Michael Pegher are also new in the ensemble. The other cast include Paul Brady, Henry Kiichli, Daniel Ohlmann and Ingela Onstad.