Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen

CONTENT
An archetypal battle of the sexes takes place in an unspecified prehistoric period. A troop of warriors strives to prevent their leader launching an attack on the fortress of the women. During confused altercations, the woman appears with her companions in radiant costumes. The group of men and women eye each other up very warily.
They repeatedly goad each other with words and allusions until the male leader has the woman branded with his emblem and her response is to wound him with a knife. The warriors turn away from their leader and enter into playful games of love with the women. The grievously wounded hero is locked up in a tower. Consumed with wild passion, the woman prowls round the cell of the leader and demands to be let in to touch the prisoner.
At dawn, the prisoner awakes and, leaning against the prison bars, conjures up a fantasy vision. In a meeting with the woman, the man gains knowledge and acquires the control of the woman whose powers reciprocally fade away. She opens the door of the prison cell in the tower and the captured leader comes out. He only needs to touch the woman slightly to kill her. While sinking to the ground, she tears down a burning torch from which sparks fly in all directions. In desperation, the men and women run towards the man who swats them dead ‘like flies’. The man flees through a corridor of fire; a cock’s crow can be heard in the distance.

COMMENTARY
Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen [Murder, Hope of Women] is the earliest of the three single-act operas and documents Hindemith’s affinity with the second wave of literary Expressionism following the end of the First World War. Kokoschka’s drama ‘Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen’, written in 1907 and revised several times during the following years, is also considered the prototype of Expressionist dramatic art. We know very little about the compositional history of the one-act opera, but copious documentation exists in the Schott publishing house on the première in Stuttgart and the printed edition of the work.