by Brendan G Carroll – Copyright 2021 The eminent Viennese critic and musicologist Dr Rudolf Stefan Hoffmann who wrote the first biography of Korngold in 1922, declared that Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s early works dream of opera. Indeed, logically and with an eye to the theatre, his first orchestral composition was an overture to a play! In fact, this flair for the dramatic had manifested itself far earlier. At the age of  just ten, Korngold, an astonishing musical prodigy, composed a cantata entitled Der Tod , and this was later to form the opening movement for a set of complex piano … Continue reading The Genesis of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Opera, Die tote Stadt