Flammen (Schulhoff)

Flammen (Flames) is an opera in two acts and ten scenes composed by Erwin Schulhoff, his only opera. The original libretto in Czech was written by . The opera had its world premiere at the old National Theatre (Národní Divadlo na Veveří) in Brno on 27 January 1932 in Czech under the title Plameny. It was not heard again until the mid-1990s, when it was performed in its German translation by Max Brod as Flammen. Its story is a surrealist retelling of the Don Juan legend with elements from the legend of the Wandering Jew, and heavily influenced by Freudian psychology. Unlike the title character in Mozart's Don Giovanni based on the same legend, Don Juan is not punished by being dragged down to Hell, but instead is condemned to live forever.

Not long after Schulhoff's return to Prague in 1923, he met Janáček's friend and biographer Max Brod, and discussed with him the possibility of writing an opera based on the Don Juan legend. Brod suggested that a new verse play by the Czech writer Karel Josef Beneš (1896–1969) might make a suitable basis for the libretto and introduced him to Beneš. Schulhoff and Beneš began work while Brod translated the text into German.

Schulhoff finished composing the opera in 1929. It premiered three years later at the Veveří National Theatre in Brno on 27 January 1932, performed in its Czech version as Plameny. Schulhoff's detailed stage directions called for sets with an "all-pervading darkness, punctuated by revealing shafts of light and colour". The scenography is echoed by a chorus of Shadows whose commentary makes frequent use of verbal images of colour and light. The premiere was a failure, and the opera never entered the repertory in Czechoslovakia. The rise of the Nazi Party in Germany and its campaign against so-called degenerate music (Entartete Musik) prevented the German premiere which was planned for Berlin with Erich Kleiber conducting. Schulhoff's usual publisher, Universal Edition, did not accept the score for publication, and the opera was not performed again before Schulhoff's death in the Wülzburg concentration camp in 1942.

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