Sancta Susanna / Eine Florentinische Tragödie

Paul Hindemith (1895–1963) was one of the most important German composers of the 20th century, an accomplished violist and conductor. The avant-garde composer was branded an "atonal noise maker" by the Nazis and emigrated to America with his wife, the daughter of Jewish conductor Ludwig Rottenberg, in March 1937. Unlike Alexander Zemlinsky, however, he was able to pursue a successful career in the USA.

Austrian composer and conductor Alexander Zemlinsky (1871–1941) was one of the prominent artists of his time in Vienna. As opera director of the Neues deutsches Theater and a regular guest of the Czech Philharmonic, he worked for 16 years in Prague, which was a world musical centre at the time; Zemlinsky had much to do with this. He died in America shortly after his emigration and his work fell into oblivion; only since the 1970s has he gradually returned to the world stage. 

Paul Hindemith's Sancta Susanna, to a libretto by August Stramm, is the last of a triptych of Expressionist-influenced one-act operas; it was preceded by Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen and Das Nusch-Nuschi.  Hindemith had originally planned to perform all the operas as a triptych in Stuttgart, but this was prevented by the great outcry over the text, which was branded blasphemous and obscene. Sancta Susanna was therefore staged separately with a year's delay, on 26 March 1922 in Frankfurt. At the Neues deutsches Theater Alexander Zemlinsky tirelessly supported contemporary composers including Paul Hindemith; he offered Hindemith's entire triptych in one evening on 3 March 1923. He performed his own operas in Prague only after their world premieres in other cities. Eine florentinische Tragödie premiered in Stuttgart on 30 January 1917, two months later Zemlinsky conducted it in Prague (4 March 1917) and from there it was on its way to the Vienna Court Opera (27 April 1917). He wrote the opera to his own libretto based on an unfinished play by Oscar Wilde.

The production is part of the Musica non grata cycle. Musica non grata is the international music and cultural project of the Czech Republic and Germany, initiated and organized by the National Theatre in Prague and financially supported by the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany. Musica non grata revives the artistic legacy of male and female composers important to the musical life of interwar Czechoslovakia who were persecuted by National Socialism or for religious, racial, political or gender reasons. More information at musicanongrata.cz.