Opern-Doppelabend ROSSE - PAGLIACCI

In the organizer's words:

Opera double bill by Winfried Zillig and Ruggero Leoncavallo

Two men, two worlds. Both lose their footing when their reality begins to totter. In Winfried Zillig's rarely performed one-act play Rosse , Franz, a farmhand, is thrown off course when his farmer's wife puts a rumor in his ear: His beloved horses could soon be replaced by machines. When a farm machinery dealer confirms this hunch, Franz kills him in a rage. But even this outburst does not save him. In deep despair, Franz chooses suicide. - In Leoncavallo's Pagliacci , too, a deep grievance leads to tragedy. Canio, leader of an acting troupe, must realize that his wife Nedda's betrayal is not a game, but bitter reality. On stage, jealousy turns into murder - the comedy is over!

Winfried Zillig (1905-1963), born in Würzburg, was an important composer, music theorist and conductor of the first half of the 20th century. As a master student of Arnold Schönberg, he combined the techniques of the New Viennese School on the way to twelve-tone music with his own dramatic signature. His first opera Rosse, based on the drama of the same name by Richard Billinger, was premiered in Düsseldorf in 1933; an expressive chamber play about loneliness and the emotional disruption of a rural world in upheaval. Leoncavallo's Pagliacci (1892), on the other hand, is exemplary of Italian verismo with its haunting mixture of play and reality.

In the run-up to the premiere of the double-bill opera, the Mainfranken Theater will also be hosting a symposium that will attempt a critical appraisal of the composer and conductor Winfried Zillig on the one hand and shed light on Winfried Zillig as a person and his role and function in the Nazi state on the other.