Bachmanns Libretti

It took a long time for the German post-war poet Ingeborg Bachmann to be recognized as a writer of prose. To this day, however, Bachmann the librettist remains largely unknown: Bachmann's early adaptation of a ballet pantomime - The Idiot after Dostoyevsky -, a first, unpublished libretto attempt from 1956 are analyzed in this study just as comprehensively as her opera adaptation of Kleist's play The Prince of Homburg and the only original libretto The Young Lord. The evaluation of numerous materials from the unpublished estate in the National Library of Vienna reveals the genesis of a libretto under the aspect of the "working together" (Hugo von Hofmannsthal) of librettist and composer. This look into the librettist's workshop sheds light on the congenial work of Ingeborg Bachmann and Hans Werner Henze. A production statistic rounds off the presentation.