THE NEWLY FOUND MASTERPIECE
Alexander Zemlinskys „Der König Kandaules“
In autumn 1996, after the world premiere of Der König Kandaules at the Hamburg State Opera, the artists, audience and critics all had the impression that a work of major importance in the history of 20th century opera had been newly discovered.
Started in 1935, first performance in 1996
Alexander Zemlinsky had begun work on what was to be his final opera project in the summer of 1935 in Vienna, where, having been banished by the Nazis from Berlin, he made an uncomfortable temporary domicile before setting out for New York in autumn 1938, by which time his German persecutors had caught up with him in his home country. Too old and too tired to settle in New York, let alone achieve success, he died in spring 1942. In his luggage he had taken Kandaules to America, largely complete as a com- position but only a third of which was orchestrated. We owe the reconstruction of the score and the completion of the orchestration to the conductor and music researcher Antony Beaumont.
Longing for ideal artistry
Der König Kandaules is based on the old story already told by Herodotus. It is the story of King Kandaules, who is so proud of his beautiful wife (whom no one besides himself is allowed to see unveiled) that he arranges for his subordinate Gyges to see her in her full unclothed glory. Nyssia, the wife of Kandaules, becomes aware of his cunning plan and is so hurt that she incites Gyges to kill her husband – “and thus Gyges gained the woman and power”. In later versions of the story a magic ring was introduced, making Gyges invisible. Zemlinsky, who had suffered all his life from the conflict between longing for ideal artistry and the pressure of reality, who considered himself to be not ambitious and self-confident enough to succeed in the arts business, recognised in André Gide’s drama (which his wife had made him aware of) that the superficial narrative of vanity and jealousy concealed an underlying problem of art and artistry. Kandaules is an artist – as Gide writes in an essay, “he has to unveil and desecrate the most secret treasures of the temple by revealing them, because he suffers from admiring them on his own and because he would like others to worship them too”. This is also how Zemlinsky saw it: the essence of art is that its creator throws himself into his work body and soul, revealing the inner self that ordinary people usually conceal. The artist is, however, driven by the essence of art to make this revelation public, on the one hand to show beauty in its nakedness and to desecrate it but in so doing to present it in a meaningful way to those people who are sensitive enough to understand this art, even though for everyone else it may seem like an act of prostitution.
Resumé of an artist’s life
Zemlinsky, who was always inhibited and closed in on himself saw that the triangle Kandaules-Nyssia-Gyges reflected much of this fundamental experience of his artistic life and with this his last opera he intended to look back on his compositional art, to recall the happiness and undoing of his genius that he as a moderately successful composer as well as a largely appreciated conductor embodied. In an interview he gave in New York, when asked how this project was to be characterised, he replied, “It is ultra modern.” Today’s listeners will no longer regard it so but it is indeed Zemlinsky’s boldest score, even though his previous opera Der Kreidekreis (The Chalk Circle) was influenced more strongly by the Zeitgeist.
Der König Kandaules is an opera of most extreme concentration on the three main figures who convey themselves to us in a few sharply contoured situations but with great consistency. Zemlinsky, allegedly a late romanticist, in no way immerses this in fin de siècle analysis but sculpts the conflicts with a hard chisel. As with all Zemlinsky’s operas, the ending of Kandaules is left open, indeed it has to have an open ending because it is really difficult to imagine the new liaison between Gyges, who was actually a good person and then became a murderer of two people, and the instigator Nyssia. Only one thing is clear: the aesthetic form of existence from which the Zemlinsky of the turn of the century himself emerged has to be regarded with the fate of Kandaules as untenable. But even destroyers of aestheticism have a terrible future ahead of them.
Jens Malte Fischer
Alfred Hrdlicka,
Adoration, 1986
Alexander Zemlinsky
Der König Kandaules
Sung in German with English supertitles
Conductor Kent Nagano
Stage director Christine Mielitz
Stage sets Alfred Hrdlicka
Costumes and assistance on sets Christian Floeren
Lighting design Friedrich Rom
König Kandaules Robert Brubaker
Gyges Wolfgang Schoene
Phedros Mel Ulrich
Syphax John Nuzzo
Nicomedes Jochen Schmeckenbecher
Pharnaces Randall Jakobsch
Philebos Georg Zeppenfeld
Simias Jürgen Sacher
Sebas John Dickie
Archelaos Almas Svilpa
Der Koch Peter Loehle
Nyssia Nina Stemme
German Symphony Orchestra Berlin
Kleines Festspielhaus
New production:
28 July 2002, 31 July, 3 August
(performance begins at 3 p.m.)
6 and 8 August Performances begin at 7 p.m.
unless otherwise stated
Tickets are available from
the Festival Ticket Office
for all performances in the categories
€ 135 (not on 31 July), € 195, € 270 and € 315
Telephone: 0043 662 8045-500
Telefax: 0043 662 8045-555
E-mail: info@salzburgfestival.at