Lear

Yet, oddly enough, none of the operatic settings has become a repertoire staple, unlike, for instance, Charles Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette or Guiseppe Verdi’s Otello. It may be down to the fact that none of the composers who have tackled the subject have been of Verdi’s calibre (although Verdi always intended to adapt King Lear).

There is, however, a modern-day opera inspired by Shakespeare’s tragedy, a work dating from the final quarter of the 20th century, that met with immense acclaim and has been staged at the world’s most prestigious opera houses – Lear, created by the German composer Aribert Reimann (b. 1936). Among his ten stage works are pieces based on Franz Kafka’s novel The Castle and August Strindberg’s play The Ghost Sonata, yet the best-known and most popular is his fourth opera, after Shakespeare’s King Lear. Written in 1978 to commission for the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, the subject was suggested by the illustrious baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who would portray the title role. Reimann did not set King Lear in its entirety and verbatim, replacing that which he omitted with a forcible, now and then harsh or, contrariwise, very moving music, clearly pursuing the trail blazed by the German Expressionists.

The parable about foolish human pride, the delusion of self-importance, the danger of rejection, as well as acceptance of responsibility and decay of a seemingly stable world, cannot perhaps be more poignantly wrought than in Reimann’s opera.