Korngold’s ‘Die tote Stadt’ at the Wiener Staatsoper

Willy Decker's highly acclaimed production with Klaus Florian Vogt, Camilla Nylund and Adrian Eröd under the baton of Mikko Franck.

Erich Korngold's third opera, Die tote Stadt, is a rich tapestry of sumptuous fin de siècle decadence. A sensational success in inter-war Europe, written when the composer was only 22, it is based on a Belgian Symbolist novel that resonates with themes that recur in both The Picture of Dorian Gray and Hitchcock's Vertigo.
Willy Decker's successful production, which has travelled widely (San Francisco Opera, Covent Garden, Gran Teatre del Liceu Barcelona) since its 2004 creation at the Salzburg Festival before finding its way into the repertoire of the Wiener Staatsoper, comes up to the musical masterpiece by superimposing the real and the imaginary, resulting in a confusion of life with dream that brings a whirling materialization to what is cold and dead. These are the “brilliant designs of Wolfgang Gussmann whose black boxes and shadowy abysses inhabited by Decker’s real people and by their shadows. The production means are both enormous and delicately expended.” (Opera today) “This performance is rightly acclaimed […]. One should by no means miss out this exemplary staging.” (Wiener Zeitung)
The Wiener Staatsopernorchester will perform Korngold's highly sophisticated and virtuosic score under the baton of Finnish conductor Mikko Franck. The supreme cast includes Klaus Florian Vogt in the technically challenging tenor role of Paul, Camilla Nylund as Marie/Marietta and Adrian Eröd as Frank/Fritz.

Co-Production Company ORF
Co-Production Company UNITEL