Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt at San Francisco Opera

Sep. 08, 2008

Erich Wolfgang Korngold's opera Die Tote Stadt makes its way to San Francisco Opera this month in the brilliant staging by director Willy Decker, first seen at the 2004 Salzburg Festival. An intense psychological study in which a man's obsession with his dead wife threatens his sanity, Die Tote Stadt is a harrowing mix of hallucinatory fantasy and painful reality that has been compared to Hitchcock's Vertigo. In addition to many great works for the concert stage, Korngold was also a renowned film composer and two-time Academy Award winner. This emotionally gripping, visually arresting trip into the dark side of a troubled psyche features a voluptuous, colorful score reminiscent of both Puccini and Richard Strauss. Critics called director Willy Decker's production "magical and intriguing... Decker brilliantly succeeds in blending reality and the dream world." Donald Runnicles conducts the San Francisco Opera premiere of Korngold's greatest work for the stage on September 23 with five subsequent performances through October 12.

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Please visit www.schott-music.com for more information on the music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

Go to www.sfopera.com to learn more on San Francisco Opera's production of Die Tote Stadt.

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Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Die Tote Stadt (1916-1919)
an opera in three acts
for 2S, A, 3T, 2B; SATB Chorus
3(2pic)2 .ca.2.bcl.2.cbsn -4.3.btp in C.3.1-4timp.perc-2hp.cel.pno.harm.mand-str.
on stage: organ.2tp.2cl.perc
145'