In his new documentary, “The Kaiser of Atlantis,” Argentine director Sebastián Alfie tells the story of composer Viktor Ullmann’s chamber opera, about a tyrant bent on waging endless war – written in 1943 in the Nazi concentration camp of Theresienstadt (Terezín) – and, more than 70 years later, a new production of the work in Madrid.
Alfie plans to follow up “The Kaiser of Atlantis” — which premieres at the Malaga Festival — with a biopic about Ullmann and the two years he spent imprisoned in Terezín.
The director first saw the opera by chance in 2006 at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. “When I read in the playbill that it had been written in a concentration camp, questions began to arise that are the germ of the documentary. Is it possible to make music in those circumstances? Were they murdered for the meaning of the work? And the most important, how is it that no one knows this story,...
Alfie plans to follow up “The Kaiser of Atlantis” — which premieres at the Malaga Festival — with a biopic about Ullmann and the two years he spent imprisoned in Terezín.
The director first saw the opera by chance in 2006 at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. “When I read in the playbill that it had been written in a concentration camp, questions began to arise that are the germ of the documentary. Is it possible to make music in those circumstances? Were they murdered for the meaning of the work? And the most important, how is it that no one knows this story,...
- 3/22/2022
- by Ed Meza
- Variety Film + TV
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