Elegie für junge Liebende

Production by the Opera Studio of the Bavarian State Opera

As its motto, the librettist Wystan Hugh Auden himself placed a quote from William Butler Yeats above the libretto: "The spirit of man must decide in favour of the completeness of life or of work." A charismatic poet who gathers a faithfully devoted group of followers around him is at the heart of Hans Werner Henze's opera Elegy for Young Lovers, first performed in 1961. And all the participants experience the bitter aftertaste of being exploited within the hazy mist of art, and what it means when any attempt at a solution ends in death. – All for the sake of art?