Leben des Orest

Ernst Krenek wrote both the words and music for *Leben des Orest* (The Life of Orestes), a grand opera in five acts and eight scenes. It is his Opus 60 and the first libretto he set in an ancient setting. The manuscript shows he worked on it from 8 August 1928 to 13 May 1929, and it includes suggested cuts for the original staging. The premiere took place at the Neues Theater in Leipzig on 19 January 1930, followed by an opening at the Kroll Opera House in Berlin in early March of that year.

By 1933, the opera had seen thirteen productions. After the Nazis took power, Krenek was banned from German stages. The first revival after World War II came in 1947 in Linz, with later performances in Frankfurt (1951), Graz (1952), Düsseldorf (1954), and Wiesbaden (1961). Krenek himself conducted the 1961 Darmstadt performances, which faced loud protests over what was seen as musical conservatism. Pierre Boulez wrote an open letter denouncing the management’s handling of the disruptions as “organized terror,” and the faculty of the Sommerferienkurse agreed, calling the work a relic of the 1920s. A successful revival followed in 1975, when the Portland Opera staged *Life of Orestes* in the composer’s own English translation.

The roles include Agamemnon (tenor), his wife Klytæmnestra (mezzo-soprano or contralto), their daughters Elektra and Iphigenie, their son Orest (baritone), the relative Ægisth (tenor), the royal nurse Anastasia (contralto), Ægisth’s servant, three elders, a lame accordionist, the chief justice Aristobulos, a cryer, two street-girls, four street singers, a shepherd, a small girl, the northern king Thoas (bass), his daughter Thamar (soprano), and choruses of crowds, warriors, guards, Athenians, judges, artists, and dancers.

The opera begins with a hidden chorus singing of a longed-for southern land. The curtain rises on a square before Agamemnon’s palace. Anastasia tells the crowd about the coming Trojan War. Agamemnon enters and speaks in short, chopped phrases, but the crowd demands peace. He orders them away, and guards clear the street. He decides there is no turning back, even if his own children must be sacrificed. Ægisth, watching, sees this as a good chance—he notes that Agamemnon is afraid of his son.