Alexander Zemlinsky - A Florentine Tragedy Op.16

Alexander ZEMLINSKY (1871-1942)

A Florentine Tragedy

Opera in One Act after Oscar Wilde Op.16

Doris Soffel, Kenneth Riegel, Guillermo Sarabia

Radio-Symphonie Orchester Berlin

Gerd Albrecht



Alexander Zemlinsky’s Eine florentinische Tragödie (A Florentine Tragedy) was premiered in Stuttgart in 1917. It is the first of two operas that Zemlinsky (1871-1942) based upon the works of Oscar Wilde. Der Zwerk (The Dwarf) followed in 1922.

Zemlinsky was right in the thick of things in Vienna in the decades before WWII. As a composer he studied with Bruckner and enjoyed the advocacy of such figures as Brahms and Mahler. As a conductor and teacher he, in turn, played a role in the careers of Viktor Ullmann (his assistant conductor), Hans Krasa and Erich Wolfgang Korngold (composition students) and Arnold Schoenberg, who married Zemlinsky’s sister Mathilde. In addition to conducting the world premiere of Schoenberg’s Erwartung, Zemlinsky holds the distinction of being the only teacher to give formal lessons (in counterpoint) to his otherwise self-taught brother-in-law.

Zemlinsky’s music evolved from a Brahmsian starting point to the kind of ravishing, post-Wagnerian style we hear in Strauss and Korngold. The “Wilde” operas are part of this mature stylistic world, at times opulent and at times brutally visceral. In the late 20s and 30s, Zemlinsky took a more objective turn, down the path taken by Hindemith and Weill despite his close personal association with the composers of the Second Viennese School.

A Florentine Tragedy is a one-act opera with only three characters: a merchant, his wife, and the aristocrat who cuckolds the husband. It features a shocking twist as this pretty routine society tragedy descends into a violent confrontation between the two men, and we learn which kind of power matters: brute strength or institutional power.