Join Austrian pianist Senka Brankovic and actor Helmut Mooshammer for an evening of poetry and music featuring a presentation of the melodrama The Lay of Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke by Viktor Ullmann and Rainer Maria Rilke - a work that explores love, war, and the search for meaning in a fractured world. Ullmann’s composition blends Rilke’s expressive Romanticism with piercing emotional clarity, standing as a powerful testament to his unwavering belief in the transformative power of art.
The texts are read in German with English subtitles projected.
ABOUT THE OEUVRE
According to Rainer Maria Rilke, The Lay of Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke was written by candlelight in the “Villa Waldfrieden” in Berlin-Schmargendorf on one night in 1899. The text recounts the dreams, fears, and final moments of a young standard-bearer amid the chaos of war. It went on to become a cult classic for generations of readers, especially for young people - Rilke himself was only 23 years old at the time he wrote it. The first edition of the new Insel Verlag edition containing Rilke’s narrative was quickly sold out in 1912 and became an immediate cultural phenomenon, and laid the foundation for the author’s success.
As early as 1918, while stationed at the Italian front, Viktor Ullmann became deeply engaged with Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke. This work, which attempts to lyrically capture ithe tension between glorious heroic death and senseless dying, accompanied the composer all the way to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Deported in 1942, Ullmann created a considerable number of his most enduring works, still believing in the good of human beings. In 1944, he set The Song of Love and Death of the Cornet Christoph Rilke to music before he was murdered in Theresienstadt in October of the same year.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Senka Brankovic | Piano
Helmut Mooshammer | Speaker
A graduate of the Mozarteum Salzburg and the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, pianist Senka Brankovic has performed internationally at major venues including the Vienna Musikverein, Vienna Konzerthaus, the Berlin Philharmonie, and opera houses in Cairo, Alexandria, and Kyoto. Brankovic teaches at the Musikhochschule Lübeck and the Berlin University of the Arts.
Born in Styria, Helmut Mooshammer trained at the Bruckner Conservatory in Linz and has held engagements at major German-speaking theaters including Münster, Konstanz, Kassel, Düsseldorf, and Hamburg’s Thalia Theater, where he was an ensemble member from 2000–2009. Since 2009/10 he has been part of the ensemble of the Deutsches Theater Berlin and appeared in the Jedermann cast of the Salzburg Festival in 2019 and 2020.