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Symphony Hall

Music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Libretto by Paul Schott
Presented by Boston Symphony Orchestra in collaboration with Boston Lyric Opera

Erich Korngold’s Die tote Stadt (“The Dead City”) is an incredibly tender work, embodying the twilight of the Romantic era. Korngold, a remarkable prodigy who later became one of Hollywood’s most important composers, began the opera when he was only 19 and completed it at age 23. It opened simultaneously in December 1920 in Cologne and Hamburg and became one of the biggest operatic successes of the era. The opera’s theme of struggling with the memory of a lost loved one undoubtedly resonated with audiences still traumatized by the recent catastrophe of World War I.