Carl Orff: Antigonae

Description

The interpretation of the character of Antigone as a passionate and particularly integral example of civil disobedience, who uncompromisingly places the laws of the gods above those of man, has lent the material a particular topicality in the 20th century. For his Antigonae, premiered at the Salzburg Festival in 1949, Carl Orff created a new dramatic music theater based on Hölderlin’s translation of Sophocles’ tragedy, without precedent or comparability. Here, the musicalization of the text is not merely an accompaniment to Sophocles’ tragedy, but leads to a gestural, physically plastic declamation whose rapidly changing nuances illustrate the inner movement of the characters. John Dew staged the play in 2006 at the Staatstheater Darmstadt as an emotional elementary event with clear references to the Third Reich.