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The Emperor of Atlantis
Bravely subversive ... The Emperor of Atlantis. Photograph: Donald Cooper
Bravely subversive ... The Emperor of Atlantis. Photograph: Donald Cooper

The Emperor of Atlantis – review

This article is more than 11 years old
Linbury Studio, London

Written in the concentration camp at Terezin between 1943 and 1944, Viktor Ullmann's astonishing The Emperor of Atlantis is at once a bitter satire on militarism and a disquieting meditation on what life might be like if mankind were unable to die. When Emperor Uberall orders total war, Death, appalled, goes on strike, but is persuaded to return when humanity finds the prospect of endless life unendurable.

The score, banned by the Terezin authorities, is bravely subversive. Cabaret combines with post-Bergian lyricism before Ullmann closes the work with a Bach chorale, under which slowing drum taps suggest fading heartbeats. The allusion to Bach forms one of the starting points for English Touring Opera's new production: director James Conway prefaces the opera with Bach's cantata Christ Lag in Todesbanden, with its comparable emphasis on mortality.

Throughout, Conway reminds us the circumstances of the opera's creation without explicitly evoking them. The performers arrive for the Bach in 1940s clothes, carrying battered suitcases as Death (Robert Winslade-Anderson) looks on: the opera closes with them huddled uncertainly together in their underwear as the light dies round them. The cantata – a costumed concert, sung in German, for which Ullmann's sorrowing Harlequin (Jeff Stewart) provides subtitles – is at times static. The opera, in English, finds Conway at his unnerving best, however, as arc lights rake the auditorium, and the glitzy proscenium of a cabaret stage gradually and ominously assumes the outline of concentration camp gates.

Musically it's terrific, with not a weak performance anywhere, though Katie Bray's warmongering Drummer and Callum Thorpe as the multiple voices of reason and technology that Ullmann simply calls Loudspeaker, are particularly outstanding. The wit and desperate sadness of it all are beautifully captured by Peter Selwyn's conducting, too. Hauntingly powerful and highly recommended.

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