When Arnold Schoenberg was working on Moses and Aaron in the '30s, he predicted that it would take 50 years for his only major opera to be produced. Last week, six years after his death in Los Angeles, the work held the stage at the Zurich June Festival long ahead of the composer's forecast.
His own libretto prescribed a cast of hundreds, including 70 elders, four "naked virgins," "dancers, supernumeraries of all kinds," and a golden calf. Vienna-born Composer Schoenberg's preoccupation with the Biblical story of Exodus paralleled his indignation at growing Naziism...
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