Blech: Alpine King and Enemy of Mankind

In 1902, Leo Blech and his librettist Richard Batka took the subject of the romantic-comic original magic play by Vienna's Ferdinand Raimund, stripped it down and turned it into Blech's fifth opera. A quick-tempered misanthrope terrorizes his family and employees with his paranoid distrust and is only cured when he is forced to view his own behavior from the outside through a magical role reversal. Dramatic opera meets folk theater with unexpectedly lush music that, organically orchestrated, is a delight to the ear. The premiere at the Dresden Court Theater was a sensational success. Then came the ban on all his music, and after the Nazi era, it was never rehabilitated. Now you can hear what we missed out on because of it.