Last month I went to the opera „The dead city“ by Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1920) in which breath and absence of breath, as signifiers of life and death, played a major part. Let me first tell you the story: A man, Paul, in his grief over the death of his wife Marie, takes a mistress called Marietta, who, in many ways, resembles the deceased Marie. He is unable to accept that death has taken Marie away from him – and wishes for Marietta, a dancer full of joie de vivre, to embody Marie. She, at first, plays along, accepting this as another role, wearing Marie‘s clothes and posing next to the countless photographs of Marie placed all over the bedroom. Read More
“And still you will forget what does not live next to you and breathes.”
