 Vienna makes ready to celebrate the centennial of the long-neglected mover and shaker Gottfried von Einem (24 January 1918 – 12 July 1996). |
No sooner had I posted
my note on Gottfried von Einem's all-but-forgotten opera Kabale und Liebe, after the same Schiller play on which Verdi based
Luisa Miller, than I heard from my old friend Wilhelm Sinkovicz, distinguished music critic of
Die Presse, Vienna
. He was delighted, he wrote, to find in me a fellow Einem enthusiast and wanted me to know that the Austrian capital would be commemorating the composer's centennial more extensively than I had indicated. In addition to
Der Besuch der Alten Dame at what I called the "fashionable" Theater an der Wien (opening March 16), "the more fashionable Vienna State Opera is preparing, as its next premiere, Einem's
Dantons Tod (premiere March 24). And
on February 23, at the the Musikverein, the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra will perform his excellent cantata An die Nachgeborenen [To Future Generations], which was first performed in New York and then banned because of a misunderstanding. "Because a verse of a psalm was missing, Einem was accused of anti-Semitism. In fact,
the Yad Vashem lists him with the Righteous Among the Nations."
