Der Kaiser von Atlantis

From the palace in which he is sequestered, Overall the Unique, Glory of the Fatherland, Joy of Humanity, and Emperor of Atlantide, declares in his kingdom a Holy War of All against All: everyone, child, woman or man, must take up arms and fight! But Death can no longer keep up with the frenetic pace of the industrialized and motorized carnage wreaked by armoured tanks and aerial fleets. He breaks his blade: from here on out, no one will die!

The Emperor can drop as many bombs and fire as many canon as he wants, his kingdom will continue to fill with beings caught between life and death, whose only wish is to utter their last breath. Finally, his palace is attacked by the rebels: everyone turns against him. Death then appears to him and explains that he is there not to condemn men but to deliver them from suffering. Death promises to return to his eternal task if Overall accepts to be his first victim …

A gripping and radical opera, Der Kaiser is inseparable from the terrible context in which it was created. It was composed in 1943 by Viktor Ullmann, then interned at the concentration camp of Terezín (Theresienstadt) — a “model” ghetto where the Nazis allowed cultural life to develop in order to fool the Red Cross. The SS authorities banned performance of the opera after they saw the general rehearsal. The massive deportations of October 1944 towards Auschwitz-Birkenau (where Ullmann, his librettist Petr Kien and all the other participants in the project would die in the gas chambers) put a definitive end to the enterprise.

But the work cannot be reduced to these macabre circumstances. By responding to the overwhelming need of their companions for thought, for humour, for emotional depth and poetry in their time of misfortune, by restoring to them, through art and culture, the status of human beings that was being denied to them, Kien and Ullmann speak to all of humanity and address that which makes us all human: our relationship to beauty and our own mortality, this Death who teaches us “to honour in our brothers the joys and pains of life”.

Der Kaiser von Atlantis, oder die Todverweigerung

(The Emperor of Atlantide, or Death Abdicates),
opera in one act, op. 49

Libretto Petr Kien

Music Viktor Ullmann

In German with subtitles

Young soloists of the Academie de Dijon Opera

Musical director Mihály Menelaos Zeke

Staging Benoît Lambert

Scenography | lights Antoine Franchet

Costumes Violaine L. Chartier

Kaiser Overall Christian Backhaus
Lautsprecher Jonathan Sells
Der Tod Conrad Schmitz
Der Trommler Simone Eisele
Harlekin Antoine Chenuet
Ein Soldat Benjamin Alunni
Bubikopf Yvonne Prentki

Violins Vít Nermut, Petr Vyoral
Viola Michaela Vyoralová
Cello Teodor Brcko
Bass Jan Kořínek
Flute Robert Fischmann
Oboe Jaroslava Tajanovská
Clarinet Karel Dohnal
Alto saxophone Pavel Jordánek
Trumpet Yasuko Tanaka
Harpsichord | piano Jitka Šlechtová
Harmonium Sergey Perepeliatnyk
Percussion Mikhail Pashaiev,
Vladislav Sosna
Guitar | banjo Antonín Dlapa