Abraxas

Egk’s Faust ballet is based on medieval sources as well as the puppet theatre version of Doctor Faust, rather than Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s famous play. Egk also gained inspiration from Heinrich Heine’s text dating from 1835: Like Heine’s, Egk’s figure of the devil is female and she conjures up a further feminine character, Archisposa, who captivates Faust. Bewitched by the beautiful Archisposa, Faust signs the devil’s pact and regains his youth. Only in the fifth act does he discover the townsman‘s daughter, Margarete, who has the ability to bring him salvation, but the pair of lovers perish in the infernal orgy of the wild, stampeding crowd. While highlighting the ecstatic, erotic tone of the plot, Egk also employs medieval colouring in his ballet. The work’s premiere at the Munich State opera house in 1948, conducted by the composer, was followed by five highly acclaimed performances before the Minister of Education in the State of Bavaria had the work removed from the repertoire for reasons of moral offensiveness. Nevertheless, this scandal proved to be no obstacle to the triumph of the first German story ballet after the Second World War.