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Tag: Viktor Ullmann

Roberta Alexander Acclaimed Soprano Dies at 76

The soprano Roberta Alexander has died.

Born in Lynchburg, VA, and raised in Yellow Springs. OH, Alexander was a leading singer at the Metropolitan Opera from 1983 to 1991. In addition to her successes in the roles of Mozart’s heroines, she was an unusually well-rounded Mimi in “La bohème” and sang the title role in Janáček’s “Jenůfa.”

It’s interesting to note that she participated in the world premiere of Viktor Ullman’s concentration camp opera “The Emperor of Atlantis” (at Dutch National Opera), composed in Theresienstadt in 1943, but not performed until 1975. Ullmann died at Auschwitz in 1944. Alexander made her home in the Netherlands from the age of 23.

Her U.S. debut was in 1980 as Pamina in “The Magic Flute” at Houston Grand Opera. Her Met debut was as Zerlina in “Don Giovanni.” At her peak at the Met, she also appeared as Vitellia in Mozart’s “La clemenza di Tito,” Antonia in Offenbach’s “The Tales of Hoffmann,” Countess Almaviva in “The Marriage of Figaro,” Donna Elvira in “Don Giovanni,” and inevitably Bess in “Porgy and Bess.” In 2016, she returned to sing the Fifth Maid in Strauss’ “Elektra.” She also enjoyed notable successes at the opera houses of Berlin, Vienna, London, and Zurich. She performed with most of the major orchestras in Europe and the U.S. and virtually all the major conductors.

Alexander was married twice, to the conductor Edo de Waart (a union that ended in divorce) and orchestral manager Siebe Riedstra. Alexander died on Tuesday at the age of 76. R.I.P.

Samuel Barber’s “Solitary Hotel,” on a text from James Joyce’s “Ulysses”

André Previn’s “Vocalise”

Leoš Janáček’s “Jenůfa” (closed caption available)

Playlist of Mozart songs

October 16, 2025
Viktor Ullmann Music From Terezin
Even under the most unspeakable circumstances, he continued to be Viktor.

Viktor Ullmann was one of the best-known composers to be interned in Terezin, or Theresienstadt, the “model camp” set up by the Nazis to deceive the foreign press and the International Red Cross.

There, concert orchestras, chamber groups and jazz ensembles were formed, operas were staged, and the Verdi Requiem was mounted no less than fourteen times. At Terezin, composers continued to create, until deportation to Auschwitz.

Ullmann wrote in 1944, “…that musically I have been challenged not hindered by Theriesenstadt, that we did not just sit by Babylon’s rivers bewailing our fate, and that our will to create culture was as strong as our will to live.”

We’ll be listening to a cross-section of Ullmann’s music written in the camp, including a piano sonata (performed by Terezin survivor Edith Kraus, who died in 2013 at the age of 100), a concert overture, and a song cycle; also, a piano concerto written shortly before his arrest, a period of hardship for the composer, as he began to be stripped of his rights and his options to make a living. He never heard the concerto performed in his lifetime. Ullmann died at Auschwitz in 1944.

Ironically, most of his unpublished works dating from before his internment are now lost. It is his music written at Terezin, for the most part, which survives. The music written during his confinement, then, becomes a metaphor for the indomitable spirit of the artist.

The composer lives on through his creations, on “Ullmann Victorious,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

To enhance your appreciation of Ullmann’s “Der Mensch und sein Tag” (“Man and His Day”), I am posting English translations of the aphoristic texts below, so that they may be read while listening to the music.

“DER MENSCH UND SEIN TAG” (MAN AND HIS DAY), Op. 47

12 Portraits by Hans-Günter Adler
1. WALK INTO MORNING
  Sight. Hands in front of eyebrows
  and maternal light. Meadowland.
  A blade of grass. A step. Dew on the flowers.
2. SONG
  So much. So much and still more.
  A great ocean, surging and pounding –
  flutes lightly, horns heavily.
3. HOME
  In the ground, the cool ground. So colourful.
  Billowing fields and meadows around.
  In the ground – hidden heart and mouth.
4. TO THE BELOVED
  With you, in smiles and tears.
  Nearness of hand and mouth. Longing
  fades. With you no blind fancy.
5. FLOWERS
  Inward, buried deep and warm.
  Breath – singing to life.
  Bright goblets, lips, tongues.
6. IN THE PARLOUR
  Tightly pressed to one another.
  Planted with care and trouble.
  Animate and inanimate. Mute and loud.
7. THE NEIGHBOUR
  Help is good. Hand in hand.
  Door to door and wall to wall:
  quite united. Bond and band.
8. PRAYERS
  Scattered in the chalice of piety
  ripe corn offered
  to the gladdened protector and creator.
9. IN THE FOREST
  Dappled, close and far and scent.
  The sun dreams, the air slumbers.
  Crepitation. Calcification. Trees. Scent.
10. FADE
  Down, down. The bell tolls.
  Clouds glow. Evening glimmers.
  Down, down. The moon-breath shimmers.
11. NIGHT
  Come, gentle sleep! Come, sweet night!
  The ground relaxes in muted glory.
  Lone thoughts sink to earth.
12. SILENCE
  Stillness. Silence. Looking and watching.
  Tranquil in blessed reflection.
  Sleep before the divine.
January 23, 2022
Auschwitz Composers Lost to Time

75 years ago today, three of the most promising composers of their generation were snuffed out in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Pavel Haas, Hans Krása and Viktor Ullmann were all transported in cattle cars from Theresienstadt (Terezin), the Nazi propaganda camp, three days after their final concert on October 14. With them was the famed conductor Karel Ančerl, who had led the performances.

Immediately upon arrival, Krása, Ullmann and Ančerl were marked for death by Josef Mengele, while Haas was selected to join the forced laborers. Then all at once Haas began to cough. Ančerl was passed over and Haas was sent to be gassed in his place.

In the propaganda film “Theresienstadt,” Haas is shown taking a bow after a performance in Terezin of his “Study for String Orchestra,” a work he had written in the camp. Ančerl can be seen on the podium.

In the same film, children sing a selection from Krása’s opera “Brundibár.” When filming wrapped, having served their purpose, 18,000 prisoners, Haas and the children included, were deported to Auschwitz. By a large margin, most did not survive.

Haas had become despondent upon his arrival in Terezin. It was fellow composer Gideon Klein who urged him to continue to create. (Klein would die under unclear circumstances in 1945.) Haas wrote at least eight compositions during his internment. His “Study for String Orchestra,” rescued by Ančerl after the liberation of the camp, would become his best-known music. Haas was at work on a large-scale symphony at the time of his deportation. The surviving turso of the piece was orchestrated by Zdeněk Zouhar in 1994.

It was Ančerl himself who related the circumstances of Haas’ death to the composer’s brother after the war. Ančerl had lost his own family, his wife and a young son. He himself went on to a bright future. He became artistic director of the Czech Philharmonic in 1950, in which capacity he championed the great Czech composers and helped to foster a distinctly Czech sound in orchestral performance.

After the Warsaw Pact invasion, he left Czechoslovakia for Toronto, Canada, where he served as music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra until his death in 1973. None of it would have happened, if not for a quirk of fate.

Thirty years after his death, the music of Haas and his colleagues began to be performed with much more frequency. Much of it is now available in recordings. Listening to it, one can’t help but marvel at the will to create and to survive, even under the most horrific of circumstances, and lament at how history, musical and otherwise, might have been very different had those interned been allowed to live out their natural lives.

Here’s a clip of “Brundibár,” particularly affecting when we realize that few of the children survived:

Also, Haas’ “Study for String Orchestra”:

PHOTO: Pavel Haas, inadvertent savior of Karel Ančerl (also pictured), takes his final bow

October 17, 2019
Viktor Ullmann Music From Terezin
Even under the most unspeakable circumstances, he continued to be Viktor.

Viktor Ullmann was one of the best-known composers to be interned in Terezin, or Theresienstadt, the “model camp” set up by the Nazis to deceive the foreign press and the International Red Cross.

There, concert orchestras, chamber groups and jazz ensembles were formed. Operas were staged, and the Verdi Requiem was mounted no less than fourteen times. At Terezin, composers continued to create, until deportation to Auschwitz.

Ullmann wrote in 1944, “…that musically I have been challenged not hindered by Theriesenstadt, that we did not just sit by Babylon’s rivers bewailing our fate, and that our will to create culture was as strong as our will to live.”

We’ll be listening to a cross-section of Ullmann’s music written in the camp, including a piano sonata (performed by Terezin survivor Edith Kraus, who died in 2013 at the age of 100), a concert overture and a song cycle; also, a piano concerto written shortly before his arrest, a period of hardship for the composer, as he began to be stripped of his rights and his options to make a living. He never heard the concerto performed in his lifetime. Ullmann died at Auschwitz in 1944.

Ironically, most of his unpublished works dating from before his internment are lost. It is his music written at Terezin, for the most part, which survives. The music written during his confinement, then, becomes a metaphor for the indomitable spirit of the artist.

The composer lives on through his works, on “Ullmann Victorious.” You can hear it tonight at 10 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network or at wwfm.org.

To enhance your appreciation of Ullmann’s “Der Mensch und sein Tag” (“Man and His Day”), I am posting English translations of the aphoristic texts below, so that they may be read while listening to the music.

“DER MENSCH UND SEIN TAG” (MAN AND HIS DAY), Op. 47

12 Portraits by Hans-Günter Adler
1. WALK INTO MORNING
  Sight. Hands in front of eyebrows
  and maternal light. Meadowland.
  A blade of grass. A step. Dew on the flowers.
2. SONG
  So much. So much and still more.
  A great ocean, surging and pounding –
  flutes lightly, horns heavily.
3. HOME
  In the ground, the cool ground. So colourful.
  Billowing fields and meadows around.
  In the ground – hidden heart and mouth.
4. TO THE BELOVED
  With you, in smiles and tears.
  Nearness of hand and mouth. Longing
  fades. With you no blind fancy.
5. FLOWERS
  Inward, buried deep and warm.
  Breath – singing to life.
  Bright goblets, lips, tongues.
6. IN THE PARLOUR
  Tightly pressed to one another.
  Planted with care and trouble.
  Animate and inanimate. Mute and loud.
7. THE NEIGHBOUR
  Help is good. Hand in hand.
  Door to door and wall to wall:
  quite united. Bond and band.
8. PRAYERS
  Scattered in the chalice of piety
  ripe corn offered
  to the gladdened protector and creator.
9. IN THE FOREST
  Dappled, close and far and scent.
  The sun dreams, the air slumbers.
  Crepitation. Calcification. Trees. Scent.
10. FADE
  Down, down. The bell tolls.
  Clouds glow. Evening glimmers.
  Down, down. The moon-breath shimmers.
11. NIGHT
  Come, gentle sleep! Come, sweet night!
  The ground relaxes in muted glory.
  Lone thoughts sink to earth.
12. SILENCE
  Stillness. Silence. Looking and watching.
  Tranquil in blessed reflection.
  Sleep before the divine.
October 9, 2016
Viktor Ullmann Music from Terezin
Tonight on “The Lost Chord,” to coincide with Holocaust Remembrance Day, we present music of Viktor Ullmann. Ullmann was one of the best-known composers to be interned in Terezin, or Theresienstadt, the “model camp” set up by the Nazis to deceive the foreign press and the International Red Cross.

There, concert orchestras, chamber groups and jazz ensembles were formed. Operas were staged, and the Verdi Requiem was mounted no less than fourteen times. At Terezin, composers continued to create, until deportation to Auschwitz.

Ullmann wrote in 1944, “…that musically I have been challenged not hindered by Theriesenstadt, that we did not just sit by Babylon’s rivers bewailing our fate, and that our will to create culture was as strong as our will to live.”

We’ll be listening to a cross-section of Ullmann’s music written in the camp, including a piano sonata (performed by Terezin survivor Edith Kraus, who died last year at the age of 100), a concert overture and a song cycle; also, a piano concerto written shortly before his arrest, a period of hardship for the composer, as he began to be stripped of his rights and his options to make a living. He never heard the concerto performed in his lifetime. Ullmann died at Auschwitz in 1944.

Ironically, most of his unpublished works dating from before his internment are lost. It is his music written at Terezin, for the most part, which survives. The music written during his confinement, then, becomes a metaphor for the indomitable spirit of the artist.

The composer lives on through his works, on “Ullmann Victorious.” You can hear it tonight at 10 ET, with a repeat Thursday night at 11, or listen to it later as a webcast, at http://www.wwfm.org.

To enhance your appreciation of Ullmann’s “Der Mensch und sein Tag” (“Man and His Day”), I am posting English translations of the aphoristic texts below, so that they may be read while listening to the music.

Of perhaps related interest, WWFM will rebroadcast “Vera’s Story,” Vera Goodkind’s first-hand account of her rescue from the Nazis by Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. Her remarks are augmented by music of composers who were caught up in the Holocaust. The program was produced by Rachel Katz and is narrated by Bill Zagorski. “Vera’s Story” will air Monday at 5 p.m. ET.

“DER MENSCH UND SEIN TAG” (MAN AND HIS DAY), Op. 47
12 Portraits by Hans-Günter Adler
1. WALK INTO MORNING
  Sight. Hands in front of eyebrows
  and maternal light. Meadowland.
  A blade of grass. A step. Dew on the flowers.
2. SONG
  So much. So much and still more.
  A great ocean, surging and pounding –
  flutes lightly, horns heavily.
3. HOME
  In the ground, the cool ground. So colourful.
  Billowing fields and meadows around.
  In the ground – hidden heart and mouth.
4. TO THE BELOVED
  With you, in smiles and tears.
  Nearness of hand and mouth. Longing
  fades. With you no blind fancy.
5. FLOWERS
  Inward, buried deep and warm.
  Breath – singing to life.
  Bright goblets, lips, tongues.
6. IN THE PARLOUR
  Tightly pressed to one another.
  Planted with care and trouble.
  Animate and inanimate. Mute and loud.
7. THE NEIGHBOUR
  Help is good. Hand in hand.
  Door to door and wall to wall:
  quite united. Bond and band.
8. PRAYERS
  Scattered in the chalice of piety
  ripe corn offered
  to the gladdened protector and creator.
9. IN THE FOREST
  Dappled, close and far and scent.
  The sun dreams, the air slumbers.
  Crepitation. Calcification. Trees. Scent.
10. FADE
  Down, down. The bell tolls.
  Clouds glow. Evening glimmers.
  Down, down. The moon-breath shimmers.
11. NIGHT
  Come, gentle sleep! Come, sweet night!
  The ground relaxes in muted glory.
  Lone thoughts sink to earth.
12. SILENCE
  Stillness. Silence. Looking and watching.
  Tranquil in blessed reflection.
  Sleep before the divine.
April 27, 2014

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