Der gewaltige Hahnrei

Composed to his own libretto on a play by Fernand Crommelynck and described by Goldschmidt as a ‘tragi-comedy’, Der gewaltige Hahnrei is one of the most remarkable of those operas whose performance momentum was cruelly cut short by the rise of Nazism in Germany in the early 1930s. The story of how Bruno irrationally suspects his wife Stella of being unfaithful and then forces her to sleep with his best friend to end his uncertainty is open to interpretation on several levels. Goldschmidt compiled this suite in 1933 following the opera's highly successful premiere in Mannheim the previous year. It effectively weaves various interludes and other excerpts from the opera into a continuous whole, providing not only an attractive addition to his orchestral oeuvre, but also an excellent introduction to a work that has been described as "one of the great operas of the 20th century" (Frankfurter Rundschau).