A rare performance of an opera written in the Theresienstadt ghetto in Terezin, Czechoslovakia during World War II takes place at the University of Hertfordshire on Holocaust Memorial Day, January 27th. The Emperor of Atlantis was composed by the Czech composer Viktor Ullman, and is based on the horrors of Nazi concentration camps. Ullman was sent to Theresienstadt from his home in Prague in the autumn of 1942. He was later moved to Auschwitz where his fellow prisoners included the musicians Karel Ancerl, Rafael Schachter, Gideon Klein, and Hans Krasa.
While in Theresienstadt Viktor Ullman wrote: 'For me Theresienstadt has been, and remains, an education in form. Previously, when one did not feel the weight and pressure of material life, because modern conveniences - those wonders of civilization - had dispelled them, it was easy to create beautiful forms. Here where matter has to be overcome through form even in daily life, where everything of an artistic nature is the very antithesis of one's environment - here, true mastery lies in seeing, with Schiller, that the secret of the art-work lies in the eradication of matter through form: which is presumably, indeed, the mission of man altogether, not only of aesthetic man but also of ethical man.
I have written a fairly large amount of music in Theresienstadt, mainly to satisfy the needs and wishes of conductors, producers, pianists and singers and thus to make provision for the permitted leisure activities within the ghetto. To make
a list of this music seems to me as idle as it does to emphasize, for instance, that in Theresienstadt it was impossible to play the piano since there were no instruments. The severe shortage of manuscript paper will surely also be of no interest to future generations. All that I would stress is that Theresienstadt has helped, not hindered, me in my musical work, that we certainly did not sit down by the waters of Babylon and weep, and that our desire for culture was matched by our desire for life; and I am convinced that all those who have striven, in life and in art, to wrest form from resistant matter will bear me out.' Viktor Ullmann, 26 Kritiken über musikalische Veranstaltungen in Theresienstadt.
+ Viktor Ullman died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz on October 14th 1944 +
The Emperor of Atlantis was first performed in 1975, and is recognised for its contribution to the understanding of the Nazi atrocities.
* The one-off student performance will be staged at the Weston Auditorium at the University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK on 27th January 2006 preceded by a talk by Holocaust survivor Stephen Frank about his experiences of Theresienstadt.
* Internet resources available at Viktor Ullman Foundation
* Thanks to SomethingJewish for the lead on this story.
* Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
* Image credits - Auschwitz from Libertarian.nl. Viktor Ullman from Viktor Ullman Foundation
* Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. If bandwidth is a problem with your permission I will host your image.
For a related story take An Overgrown Path to Childhood luggage
Nice, and topical, to see my January 2006 article on Viktor Ullman's (right) holocaust opera The Emperor of Atlantis being set as an assignment by Louisiana State University's music department. Also good to see that nothing changes with students. They are all arriving On An Overgrown Path just a few days before the assignment deadline.
