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lesser-known-composers · 2 years

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Korngold: Die tote Stadt / Act 1 - Glück, das mir verblieb (Mariettalied) ·

Renée Fleming · English Chamber Orchestra · Jeffrey Tate

#Korngold #opera

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infinitelytheheartexpands · 2 years

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Talk about an opera you don't get to talk about much...let it all out

Alright, peeps, buckle up! We’re gonna talk about Die tote Stadt today!

so first off, seriously, if you have not seen or listened to this opera, you NEED to. I basically found it by chance in 2017, one listen and I was hooked forever.

specifically we’re gonna talk about this famous scene and its reprise at the end of the opera.

so if you don’t know the plot, the basic premise is that we’re in Bruges, Belgium, the “dead city” of the title—a decaying place that hangs on to the past, to ritual, to memories of past glory, and so on—sometime in the late 19th century (although this frequently changes). there’s this guy named Paul who is severely depressed on account of his wife Marie having died sometime in the past and he just cannot. move. on. like “he has an entire room in his house that’s frozen in time and is essentially a shrine to his dead wife”.

(like, okay, as someone who has also suffered loss like that, I get it, but buddy, that is not a healthy coping mechanism at all. you are not doing well.)

enter Marietta, a visiting dancer who looks exactly like Marie but whose personality could not be more different. however, Paul, who has met Marietta in the street by chance, does not know this and invites her to his house, and they end up in this shrine to the dead wife.

at one point, Paul asks Marietta to hold a lute that belonged to Marie. Marietta takes this opportunity to say they should sing an old song together, and thus begins “Glück das mir verblieb” or the “Mariettalied”.

the translation of the Mariettalied is roughly as follows:

Joy, that near to me remains,

Come to me, my true love.

Night sinks into the grove

You are my light and day.

Hearts beat uneasily against one another;

Hope itself soars heavenward.

How true, a sad song.

The song of true love,

that must die.

I know the song.

I heard it often in younger,

in better days.

It has yet another verse—

Do I know it still?

Though sorrow becomes dark,

Come to me, my true love.

Lean your pale face towards me.

Death will not separate us.

If you must leave me one day,

Believe, there is an afterlife.

the parallels and connections between the song and Paul’s situation are pretty clear, I think.

(the thing happens to be one of the most gorgeous pieces in all opera. but I digress.)

so not long after this, Paul and Marietta get into a somewhat heated argument because Marietta accidentally pulls the curtain covering a portrait of Marie and it all kinda goes downhill from there, and she storms off to her rehearsal. left alone, Paul engages in a series of progressively more horrifying hallucinations/dreams that make up most of the remainder of the opera, culminating in an extended hallucination/dream in which he strangles Marietta to death with a braid of Marie’s hair (don’t ask).

but in the opera’s final scene, he snaps out of it, and bewilderedly realizes that it was all a dream. nevertheless, it is a dream which has affected him very deeply:

“I shall not see her anymore.

A dream has dashed my dream to earth,

A dream of realities has killed

the dream of fantasy and sweet deception.

Such dreams are sent to us by our dead

if we live too much with and in them.

How far should we give way to grief,

how far dare we without disaster?

Harrowing conflict of the heart!”

(translation taken from a Met libretto from 1921, the year after this opera premiered)

His friend Frank then asks him, “Paul, will you come and leave this city of death?”

Paul’s response is simple and it always gets me:

“I will—I will try.”

because trying is always the first thing. it’s that first step of hope, of strength, of resolve, things which Paul was sorely lacking in before.

from there, Paul sings the last lines of the opera once again to the tune (and same opening line) of the Mariettalied, but this time with a twist:

Glück, das mir verblieb,

Lebe wohl, mein treues Lieb.

Leben trennt von Tod,

Grausam Machtgebot.

Harre mein in lichten Höhn,

Hier gibt es kein Auferstehn.

Joy that near to me remains…

Farewell, my true love.

Life parts from death,

a cruel reality.

Wait for me in the light of heaven,

for here there is no resurrection.

(this translation is mostly my own)

And on the final, gloriously gorgeous notes of the opera, he closes everything up in the shrine to his wife, closes the door, turns back for just a moment, and then leaves. the end!

he’s going to try. it hurts—and his final lines make it clear to me that it’s a reality that hurts him dearly, but now he’s going to face it in the moment instead of singing old songs and trying to bring back this past that can never be again.

it just—*screams incoherently into my pillow*. it’s about love and loss and grief and learning to move on and move forward through unimaginable sorrow and trauma and growth and just learning to close the door on the past and move on. it just hits me in the gut every single time I think about it.

anyway, that’s that. thanks for giving me this space.

#opera #opera tag #Die tote Stadt #The Dead City #opera thoughts #opera asks #Glück das mir verblieb #Mariettalied #Korngold #erich wolfgang korngold #*screams incoherently*

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ashypenguinstuff · 5 years

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joyyha-blog1 · 7 years

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