Operatic hope springs from Nazi camp in The Emperor of Atlantis

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      It is a tired cliché that art feeds the soul, but in the case of Theresienstadt, an old Czechoslovakian garrison town transformed into a Nazi transit camp, the platitude rings true. Of the more than 140,000 Jews who entered Theresienstadt between 1941 and 1945 (33,000 of whom perished there, while 90,000 were deported to Auschwitz and other death camps), many were Czech artists and intellectuals who staged plays and concerts within the camp. Among them were composer Viktor Ullmann and poet Petr Kien.

      Together, Ullmann and Kien created a one-act opera, The Emperor of Atlantis, a thinly veiled criticism of Adolf Hitler which was not performed until 1975. Nazi officers who witnessed a rehearsal shut it down and shipped the entire company, including its creators, to Auschwitz—but not before Ullmann had entrusted his compositions to a friend, who managed to survive.

      This Sunday (February 1) at 2 p.m., in a City Opera Vancouver coproduction with the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, The Emperor of Atlantis will receive its B.C. premiere at the Norman Rothstein Theatre, where it will run until February 11. During a break at Richmond’s Gateway Theatre on the first day of rehearsals, director Peter Jorgensen reflected, in conversation with the Straight, on the meaning of the work.

      “You can conceive of it as a really dark, heavy piece,” he mused, “but the more I learned about it, the more I read it, the more I understood it, it was a piece that had a lot of light in it, a lot of life force.”

      The plot is filled with morbid humour. In the mythical city of Atlantis, Emperor Uberall wages perpetual war, prompting Death to go on strike. Death agrees to go back to work, on one condition: that the emperor be the first to die. They are joined by Loudspeaker, who narrates; Drummer Girl, the emperor’s companion; Harlekin, a character representing life; a soldier; and Bubikopf, a maiden with whom the soldier falls in love after he fails to kill her.

      “It’s hard to imagine that they had the gall to even consider doing that in that camp,” Jorgensen notes. “The Emperor of Atlantis is clearly a metaphor for Hitler, and he’s mocked terribly.”

      The score helps convey a twisted, sometimes farcical surrealism, with influences ranging from Johann Sebastian Bach and Gustav Mahler to Alban Berg and Kurt Weill. Soprano Robyn Driedger-Klassen, who plays Bubikopf, describes her part as having “some really strikingly beautiful soaring lines.”¦There’s some really hard pitches in this, and it’s tricky.”

      Also difficult is dealing with the emotions the work inspires. “I know that there will be one day, for sure, where I’ll hit a wall and I’ll have to cry a bit, and then get over it,” she says.

      Yet Jorgensen believes that audiences will ultimately be uplifted. “It is very much a piece of protest and a piece of hope, I think,” he says. “It offers up the hope that maybe one day we will learn. But we still haven’t, and I think that’s why it’s so important that this piece has a life.”

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