König Hirsch

An intrigue surrounds the young king who grew up protected by animals in the forest. Prior to the approaching search for a bride for the king, the governor attempts to persuade a young girl who has refused to participate to murder the king. His plans fail due to the animals of the forest who have come to protect the king whom they regard as the epitome of pure and innocent nature. They force the governor to reveal his machinations, but the king remains unsuspicious. A renewed murder attempt by the shy murderer Coltellino also fails; the king is transformed into a white stag. The governor assumes the identity of the king and under this disguise institutes a tyrannical reign of terror. When the king arrives in the town in his transformation as a stag, he is recognised by the girl. A final attempt on the part of the governor to kill the stag, effectively murdering the king, fails again. The king is restored to his human form and takes the girl as his wife to universal jubilation. The exuberant tonal sensuality, the rich orchestral colours and the Baroque pleasure in playfulness with all its form of theatrical illusion in König Hirsch, stands in great contrast to Boulevard Solitude and displays a completely new facet of Henze’s operatic style. In response to the harsh reactions to the first performance of the opera which had been substantially mutilated by Hermann Scherchen, Henze was motivated to create a second version of the work entitled Il Re Cervo.

"The miracles which take place in the legend of König Hirsch – the concept of metamorphosis, ideas of freedom going beyond what is endurable, the death of a tyrant and peace – are all motives which had to be represented without the slightest degree of distortion, without parody and without tricks. The work is neither conceived as a fairy tale opera or a dream play and also not as a modern version of commedia dell’arte, although it certainly possesses individual traits of all of these forms. The work’s simple title “opera” indicates the intended direction. The action which is crammed full of miraculous events initially distracts from the inherent intended realism, only to have an even greater effect towards the work’s culmination."