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Kurt Weill's Royal Palace at Bard's Summerscape

Jul. 08, 2010

On August 22, the Bard Music Festival presents the rarely performed Kurt Weill/Iwan Goll opera Royal Palace, with Leon Botstein conducting the American Symphony Orchestra and James Bagwell directing the Bard Festival Chorale. The performance will feature Lisa Saffer (Dejanira), Andrew Schroeder (Husband), Liam Bonner (Yesterday's Lover), Brian Stucki (Tomorrow's Lover), Nicholas Phan (Young Fisherman), Jeffrey Tucker (Old Fisherman), and Elizabeth Reiter (solo soprano).

After completing his first opera, Der Protagonist (which had a sensational theatrical debut in Dresden in 1926), Weill was introduced to the lyric poet Iwan Goll. Weill transformed Goll’s poem Der neue Orpheus into a cantata for soprano, violin, and orchestra, then wrote the one-act, modernist opera Royal Palace on a libretto by Goll. Innovative in its incorporation of film and dance, Royal Palace, along with Der neue Orpheus, premiered at the Berlin Staatsoper on Weill’s twenty-seventh birthday, March 2, 1927, led by the same Staatsoper team that had premiered Alban Berg’s Wozzeck in 1925.

An important transitional work, Royal Palace was Weill’s first composition to incorporate popular dance forms, tango rhythms and jazz elements—a technique that Weill would continue to refine. Such explorations soon led to two of his most important works, Die Dreigroschenoper and Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny.

Royal Palace tells the story of the elegant and wealthy Dejanira, who is staying with her husband in a luxury lakefront hotel (the “Royal Palace”), but who has tired of wealth and leisure. Her husband, her past lover, and her future lover each try to entice her with a vision of what life with them would be like. At the end of the three visions, Dejanira denounces all three men and walks into the lake. She is transformed into a mermaid, while her husband remains standing on the shore.

There was one further production following the premiere in 1929 and then the score and parts disappeared under circumstances that remain mysterious. Fortunately, the piano reduction of the score preserved many details about the work, including some information about the orchestration. In 1971, Gunther Schuller and Noam Sheriff prepared a new orchestration following Weill’s original indications as far as possible. This version was performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in London in 2000, then again at the Bregenz Festival in 2004. A recording of the BBC performance is available on the Capriccio label.

Learn more on the life and music of Kurt Weill by visiting www.kwf.org.

Precise ticketing information on the performance can be found at www.fishercenter.bard.edu.

Kurt Weill
Royal Palace (1925-26)
opera in one act
libretto (Ger) by Iwan Goll
for dramatic soprano, soprano, 2 basses, baritone, 2 tenors and female chorus
2.pic.2.2.3(cbsn).asax-4.2.2.1-timp.perc-str
Stage Orchestra: glockenspiel, 5 bells, celesta, piano, harp, perc, pitched auto horn.
45'

Filmszene aus Royal Palace (1925-26)
orchestral excerpt from Royal Palace
2(pic).2.2.3.asax-4.2.2.1-pno.perc-str
5'

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