Der Kaiser von Atlantis

Der Kaiser von Atlantis oder Die Tod-Verweigerung (The Emperor of Atlantis or The Disobedience of Death) is a one-act opera by Viktor Ullmann with a libretto by Peter Kien. They collaborated on the work while interned in the Nazi concentration camp of Theresienstadt (Terezín) around 1943. The Nazis did not allow it to be performed there, and the script was not finalized until the 1970s.

The world premiere, presented by the Netherlands Opera at the Bellevue Centre, Amsterdam, took place on 16 December 1975. It was conducted by Kerry Woodward using the first performing edition, which he had been actively involved in preparing.

The title is sometimes given as Der Kaiser von Atlantis, oder Der Tod dankt ab, that is, The Emperor of Atlantis, or Death Abdicates, and described as a "legend in four scenes" rather than an opera. It follows the personification of death as an overworked soldier, driven to abandon his duties by the senseless warmongering of the tyrannical Kaiser Overall.

About 1943, Ullmann and Kien were inmates at the Nazi concentration camp of Theresienstadt (Terezín) when they collaborated on the opera. It was rehearsed at Theresienstadt in March 1944, but the Nazi authorities interpreted the work's depiction of the character of the Kaiser as a satire on Adolf Hitler and did not allow it to be performed. Both the composer and the librettist were murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Prior to his death, Ullmann had expressed that his time in Theresienstadt did not damper his creative drive. This sentiment is confirmed by Ullmann himself:

It should be emphasized that we by no means just sat lamenting by Babylon's rivers and that our will to culture was adequate to our will to live.

— Viktor Ullmann

Ullmann entrusted his manuscripts to a fellow-prisoner, Dr. Emil Utitz, a former Professor of Philosophy at the German University in Prague, who served as the camp's librarian. Utitz survived the camp and passed the manuscripts on to another survivor, Dr. Hans Gunther Adler, a friend of Ullmann's, some of whose poems Ullmann had set to music. The score was a working version with edits, substitutions, and alternatives made in the course of rehearsals. Dr. Adler deposited the original manuscripts and two copies of the libretto in his possession at the Goetheanum in Dornach, the center for the anthroposophical movement with which Ullmann was associated. The manuscripts subsequently passed to the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basle.

The first performing edition of the work was prepared between 1973 and 1975 by Kerry Woodward, a London-based musician and arranger who had a personal connection with the Adler family. Woodward worked through the nearly complete orchestra score, loose pages of additional music, and two copies of the libretto, one version in Ullmann’s handwriting and the other one typed. Woodward conducted the world premiere of the piece with the Dutch National Opera (DNO) on 16 December 1975 at the Theater Bellevue [nl] in Amsterdam, a production the company later took to Brussels for two performances in May 1976 and to Spoleto for four more the following month.