Flammen

Flammen (Flames) is a one-act opera by Franz Schreker, on a libretto by Dora Leen, pseudonym of Dora Pollak (b. 23 October 1880, d. Auschwitz c.1942).

Composition history

Dora Pollak's father, the well-known Viennese doctor Siegmund Pollak, was personal physician to Ferdinand von Saar, an important Austrian literary figure and also Schreker's friend and mentor in Vienna. It was von Saar who arranged the meeting between the librettist and the composer. Schreker started the composition after August 1901 and completed the opera (his first) before April 1902.

Performance history

The opera was first given in a concert performance, with piano accompaniment only, on 24 April 1902 at the Bösendorfer Saal in Vienna. Schreker had copies of the libretto and vocal score printed to try to promote the work but it met with little interest from the conductors and opera houses he sent it to. The full score was never published. However, Schreker did have two individual numbers from the opera published by Universal Edition in Vienna in 1922: Gebet der Agnes (Agnes' prayer) (from Scene 11) and Gesang der Irmgard (Irmgard's song) (from Scene 17): both are scored for soprano and orchestra.

Flammen (Schulhoff)

Flammen (Flames) is an opera in two acts and ten scenes composed by Erwin Schulhoff, his only opera. The original libretto in Czech was written by Karel Josef Beneš. The opera had its world premiere at the old National Theatre (Národní Divadlo na Veveří) in Brno on 27 January 1932 in Czech under the title Plameny. It was not heard again until the mid-1990s, when it was performed in its German translation by Max Brod as Flammen. Its story is a surrealist retelling of the Don Juan legend with elements from the legend of the Wandering Jew, and heavily influenced by Freudian psychology. Unlike the title character in Mozart's Don Giovanni based on the same legend, Don Juan is not punished by being dragged down to Hell, but instead is condemned to live forever.

Background and performance history

Not long after Schulhoff's return to Prague in 1923, he met Janáček's friend and biographer Max Brod, and discussed with him the possibility of writing an opera based on the Don Juan legend. Brod suggested that a new verse play by the Czech writer Karel Josef Beneš (1896–1969) might make a suitable basis for the libretto and introduced him to Beneš. Schulhoff and Beneš began work while Brod translated the text into German.