After 1933 nobody had the opportunity to hear this opera. Then the
Osnabrück Music Theater rediscovered Das Lied der Nacht by Hans Gál and
performed it in 2017. This late-romantic opera to a text by Karl Michael
von Levetzow premiered in 1926, but since its composer was of Jewish
origin, the Nazis prohibited stage productions of it. During his later
years Hans Gál was doubly forgotten: as one of the many Jewish artists who
were forced into exile by the Fascists and as a conservative »very-latest
romanticist« pursuing paths laid out by Brahms and Richard Strauss. He
himself described Das Lied der Nacht as a »dramatic ballad« symbolically
representing the emotional world of a Sicilian hereditary princess destined
for sovereignty. The text set in twelfth-century Palermo evokes a magical,
romantic world in which Antiquity and Byzantine and Moorish elements
combine to form a synthesis of rare fascination and a lyrical blend of
European and Oriental culture. After the premiere at the end of May 2017,
the NOZ wrote, »Fantastic music, a good libretto, a marvelous performance,
an all-around successful rediscovery that the premiere audience in the
Osnabrück Theater celebrated with abundant applause.« Now on cpo and an
absolute listening must!