By Daniel Hautzinger

Erich Wolfgang Korngold isn’t exactly a household name, but you’ve probably heard music by him or imitating him. Korngold, an Austrian composer active in the first half of the twentieth century, is best known in the US for his scores of such Hollywood films as The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Prince and the Pauper in the ‘30s and ‘40s. As the distinguished music journalist Donald Rosenberg said in a phone interview, “He really changed the whole trajectory of film scores by writing very lushly for the orchestra, using it almost as a character in the drama, and by writing scores that were essentially operatic, with themes for different characters.”

Yet before he worked in Hollywood, Korngold achieved great success as a composer of concert and theater music. On June 14, Opera Circle will present Korngold’s opera Die Tote Stadt (“The Dead City”) at the Ohio Theatre in PlayhouseSquare. In anticipation of that production, Rosenberg has been giving a series of introductory programs on Korngold and Die Tote Stadt at libraries throughout the area (see our concert listings page for times and locations). [Read more…]