Operattas: Zeus Und Elida / Schone Geschic

Wolpe (Artist), Hirzel (Artist), Bischoff (Artist), Ebony Band (Artist), Herbers (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 14, 2000)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Polygram Records
• ASIN: B00003ZA6B
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #286,150 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

This disc, part of Decca's Entartete Musik series of composers suppressed by the Nazis, features Stefan Wolpe's political theater works of the 1920s, enabling a more complete picture of his artistic development. Zeus und Elida is a Dada-esque work that Wolpe accurately labeled a "musical grotesque." The story line has Zeus retiring to earth and obsessing over Elida, a whore. Things go frantically downhill from there, to music derived from dances ranging from the Charleston and tango to csárdás. Schoene Geschichten is a surrealistic chamber opera of seven brief vignettes, the text of some reading like Abbott and Costello routines. The disc's last work includes a ghostly choral chant, Stimmen aus dem Massengrab ("Voices from the Mass Grave"), a chilling augur of the coming horrors. --Dan Davis