The central character in Die tote Stadt (1920) keeps a plait of his dead wife’s hair in a glass jar and fantasises about a doppelganger sex goddess. Erich Korngold’s youthful work plays to our worst fears of loss and loneliness. Called The Dead City in English National Opera’s new staging, this is the second production for the company by its artistic director, Annilese Miskimmon, following success last year with The Handmaid’s Tale. Again she has made a taxing choice. Despite the overdue recognition of Korngold (1897-1957), Die tote Stadt – banned by the Nazis then neglected for decades – is still a relative rarity. The Austrian-born composer moved to the US and triumphed in the golden age of 1930s and 40s Hollywood. That popularity long scuppered his wider “serious” reputation. His fertile gift for melody shines through The Dead City.
Written in the aftermath of the first world war and based on Georges Rodenbach’s short novel Bruges-la-Morte (1892), the work is often spoken of as a study of grief. Grief, we might argue, is more nuanced, an ebb and flow. The dominant force here, annihilating, engulfing, crushing all in sight, is obsession. Two lead singers (the Swiss tenor Rolf Romei and British soprano Allison Oakes), playing lovers of a hallucinatory kind, hurtle and soar above the tidal waves of Korngold’s rich, fortissimo orchestral music. Theirs is a prolonged cry of agony, a vortex of mutual incomprehension. The pauses, when they come, as in the lovely Pierrot’s Song, are balm.
