Original broadcast 30.12.1949
Bayerischer Rundfunk

The composer could not remember this work exactly, and so wrote in his autobiography: "In January 1950, I don't remember exactly when, I went to Munich with Hilpert and produced a radio play music for him - I have also forgotten what the piece was called. Maria Wimmer was one of the readers, the next day I saw her again on the plane to Berlin (...)." (Hans Werner Henze: Reiselieder mit böhmischen Quinten, Frankfurt 1996, p. 105)

In January 1950, however, the Constance theatre where Hilpert was Henze's boss had already been closed due to bankruptcy.

Hugo von Hofmannsthal

The Mine at Falun

Original Das Bergwerk zu Falun (Schauspiel)

Adaption (word) Heinz Hilpert

Composition Hans Werner Henze

Shortly before his wedding in 1677, the miner Fet Matts Israelsson disappeared in the Swedish copper mine of Falun. It was not until 42 years later that his body was found in the mine tunnel. Because the copper vitriol had completely preserved his body, his widow was still able to identify him. This metaphor for the idea of "eternal youth" and a "leap in time" became the model for adaptations by numerous authors, such as Johann Peter Hebel, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Georg Trakl, or Franz Fühmann, but the simile of the preserved corpse also appears in the stories of glacier corpses in the Alps that reappear immaculately preserved after decades, for example in Henze's opera "Elegy for Young Lovers" or in the newspaper reports of "Ötzi" regularly enriching the summer news slump.

Cast

Production and Broadcast Dates

Bavarian Radio (BR) 1949
First broadcast: 30.12.1949 | 80'45