Work of the Week – Ernst Toch: The Princess and the Pea

A girl has to be good and sweet? Not at all. The princess in the children's opera The Princess and the Pea by Ernst Toch has a mind of her own. The cheeky piece will be performed from 2 February 2024 in the BlackBox of the Landestheater Linz. The production is directed by Martin Philipp and the Bruckner Orchestra is conducted by Ingmar Beck.

Ernst Toch has composed very special music for the strange royal court. There, a foreign princess must first pass a mean test before she is allowed to marry the prince. The music tells of the feelings that people have to sing out and pokes a little fun at them. The adults in the castle hide a tiny pea under a pile of mattresses to test the foreign princess's sensitivity and find out if she really has blue blood. It's really quite ridiculous!

The Princess and the Pea by Ernst Toch: Character before Ancestry

Because let's be honest: it's about the people themselves and not their origins, isn't it? The king thinks so too. And so he hopes that his son and the foreign princess can simply marry in the end - and not base their happiness on old rules and strange inheritance tests.

There are probably few light-hearted operas of our century in which the text is as richly imagined, as psychologically profound and as aptly and discreetly ironic as it is here by Toch. The Princess belongs to the most enjoyable music theatre of this genre imaginable. (Austrian Music Magazine)

The day before the premiere there will be a "Bühne frei!" children's workshop at the Landestheater Linz. In total, The Princess and the Pea can be seen there in 18 performances until 3 March 2024.
 

Links:

Ernst Toch: Composer Profile

The Princess on the Pea: Work Details and Online Score  

Website Landestheater Linz 

Illustration: created with artificial intelligence / Adobe Firefly