Obscure desires

In the early decades of the twentieth century Franz Schreker was one of the most popular opera composers in the German-speaking world; however his Jewish ancestry put him at odds with the rise of National Socialism, and when he died in 1934 he had lived just long enough to be stripped of his teaching positions and to witness the disappearance of his works from the stage. It was not until the late 1980s that a serious reevaluation of Schreker’s oeuvre started to take place; in the past decade, as many of his works celebrate their centenary, recordings of his operas have become easier to find and, increasingly, it has been possible to see them on stage. 

The most recent of these revivals, a new production of Der Schatzgräber at the Deutsche Oper, was brought to life by director Christof Loy and conductor Marc Albrecht, the team who, in 2018,…