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. Torn between being faithful to Marie but desiring Marietta, Paul rushes into Marietta‘s arms only to then reject her and guiltily confer with Marie‘s ghost about the status of their marriage. Marie‘s ghost, also, is torn between holding on to Paul and letting him be with his new mistress. When Marietta refuses to continue to play second fiddle to the memory of Marie and forces Paul to acknowledge her as the woman in his life, he strangles her. The instrument of strangulation is Marie’s golden hair, hitherto kept in a glass box.
The major theme is the nature of grief and how trying to hold on to the dead interferes with existing among the living. Breath figures frequently as a clear distinction between the living and the dead. And so it‘s compelling that Paul takes Marietta‘s breath away to keep the distinction blurred and the illusion of his wife alive. Killing a bird with two stones, he revenges his disempowerment, through death taking away Marie, by playing the role of death himself and taking Marietta‘s life.
Here are some of the examples where breathing occurs in the libretto by Paul Schott:
LUCIENNE
Where were you, Marietta?
MARIETTA
Didn‘t want to reherse today,
went to the country with Gaston.
JULIETTE
And what about your guy, the solemn one?
MARIETTA
I ran away. Just needed to breathe.
————
MARIETTA
You, who have gone,
don‘t push your way into life
Leave us, who breathe and live,
who suffer and aspire,
Leave us the bubbling fountains,
Leave us the storms and suns and pleasures,
Leave us the drunken goings-on
of lust and love !
————-
PAUL
You are mine, always, for ever.
Mine in this dead city,
you sound in her bells,
rises from her waters…
MARIE
And still you will forget
what does not live next to you and breathes.