Columbus

Like many composers of the 1930s, Werner Egk used the new medium radio: his opera Columbus was composed in 1932 as radio opera for the Bavarian Radio and describes the spectacular rise and fall of Christopher Columbus from his embarkation to the ‘new world’, full of hope, until his death in bitterness, poverty and humiliation. Egk avoids any glorification of the hero. The opera’s subtitle ‘Report and Portrait in Three Parts’ rather points to a dramatic principle which Egk circumscribes with the term ‘documented authenticity’.

Quotes from historical documents and the distant commentarial role of the chorus accentuate both the conflicting nature of the eponymous hero and the questionable result of their efforts: the paradise discovered by Columbus turned into a hell of colonial exploitation within a few years.