By DAVID MERMELSTEIN

IN a city that often shows scant regard for history, the Los Angeles Opera is undertaking an extraordinary project of reclamation. Under the banner “Recovered Voices,” James Conlon, in his second season as the company’s music director, is reviving operas suppressed by the Nazis.

Next Sunday Mr. Conlon, 57, is to conduct the project’s first fully staged production, a double bill of “Der Zwerg” (“The Dwarf”) by Alexander Zemlinsky and “Der Zerbrochene Krug” (“The Broken Jug”), which Viktor Ullmann composed not long before being interned in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. (He died two years later in Auschwitz.)

Though such works have been unearthed in Europe at least since the 1970s, they have yet to take root in America, where Mr. Conlon has for years extolled their virtues. But “Recovered Voices” has already raised nearly $5 million to stage some of these operas.

“You could do any number of 50 works,” Mr. Conlon said recently of the available repertory. “But I wanted to start with Zemlinsky because it was through him that I became familiar with this whole subject, which then became a mission. Besides, I consider ‘Zwerg’ one of the greatest operas of the 20th century.”

“Der Zerbrochene Krug,” here in its American premiere, is new to Mr. Conlon. But he has a long history with another Ullmann opera, “Der Kaiser von Atlantis” (“The Emperor of Atlantis”), a work for small forces that he has conducted more than half a dozen times, often in synagogues.

Works by Walter Braunfels, Ernst Krenek, Erich Wolfgang Korngold and others damaged or destroyed by Hitler’s rise and the Holocaust also figure regularly in Mr. Conlon’s programs, whether operatic, orchestral or choral. He is the music director of the Ravinia Festival near Chicago and the Cincinnati May Festival, and he has recently branched out into dance. At the Juilliard School in December he conducted a program of works newly choreographed to music by Zemlinsky, Franz Schreker and Erwin Schulhoff.

Inevitably questions of motive surround discussions of such music and its creators, who are susceptible to everything from pity to opportunism. Mr. Conlon is sensitive to such queries.

“I am not interested in tokenism or novelty,” he said. “I am not a specialty conductor, nor do I want this to be viewed as specialty repertory. This is an integral part of German music. These are not people from outer space. They have the same roots and came out of the same environment as everyone else in their time.”

Though not all music lovers may be ready to embrace a host of unfamiliar composers as heirs to Weber and Wagner and siblings to Strauss, Mr. Conlon is not alone in his view.

Michael Haas, the music curator at the Jewish Museum in Vienna, suggests a similar interpretation of 20th-century music history. Like Mr. Conlon, he speaks less as an academic than as someone with practical experience, having produced the acclaimed Entartete Musik (Degenerate Music) series for the Decca label in the 1990s, which anticipated Mr. Conlon’s work.

“Most of this music was banned because of Jewish authorship,” Mr. Haas said. “But if you look at the people who aspired to follow Wagner, you see a lot of successful Jewish composers who were building on what came before, while the non-Jewish composers, like Webern, Berg and Krenek, were far more adventurous. By banning Jewish composers, Hitler shot himself in the foot.”

Mr. Haas argues that early-to-mid-20th-century Jewish composers, many as secular as their non-Jewish counterparts, thrived in a musical landscape where tonality and Romantic impulses reigned. He also suggests that their scores represent musical bridges.

“Between Mahler and Schoenberg what is there?” Mr. Haas asked. “Well, there’s Schreker. He’s the missing link. He could not have been more central, and with his disappearance, so went an important chapter in music history.”

Yet even if advocates like Mr. Conlon reclaim that chapter, there is no guarantee that people will want to hear the music. So moving audiences and critics beyond their presuppositions becomes important.

“A lot of people think that this music is all about the Holocaust,” Mr. Conlon said, “but only 2 percent of it was written in concentration camps. This is about the restoration of two generations of composers that were wiped off the map, a tremendous variety of composers.”

To direct “Der Zwerg” and “Der Zerbrochene Krug,” Mr. Conlon has enlisted Darko Tresnjak, a Shakespeare specialist and former student of Andrei Serban who was recently appointed co-artistic director of the Old Globe theaters in San Diego. His background in the classics should prove an asset, for “Der Zwerg” is based on Oscar Wilde’s short story “The Birthday of the Infanta,” and “Der Zerbrochene Krug” on Heinrich von Kleist’s one-act comedy of that name.

“Der Zwerg” tells of an ugly but soulful dwarf, unaware of his physical appearance, who is a given to the Spanish infanta as a birthday present. Mocked by nearly all but the princess, he promptly falls in love with her, only to be rejected. When he eventually sees his reflection, he dies brokenhearted, realizing why he will never be loved.

The plot of “Der Zerbrochene Krug” has all the makings of a Preston Sturges movie, centering on a trial in which the judge himself is the guilty party. Though it ends in broad humor, the material’s serious subtext of perverted justice doubtless appealed to its victimized composer.

Mr. Conlon first approached Mr. Tresnjak about two and a half years ago, before “Recovered Voices” existed. The plan then was for a trilogy of rarely heard one-act operas by Mussorgsky, Krenek and Benjamin Fleischmann, considered by the Los Angeles Opera but now scheduled for the Juilliard School in November.

At the time Mr. Tresnjak knew no music by any of the suppressed composers dear to Mr. Conlon. But he has become a zealous convert, and the two now share a vision.

“I love it when people like James come along,” Mr. Tresnjak said. “It renews the way I look at my craft and takes me in another direction. I’m very comfortable that all of this would not be happening without James’s passion. That’s the driving force.”

Because these operas are unknown to most audiences, Mr. Conlon and Mr. Tresnjak agreed to present them straightforwardly. “There’s no point in deconstructing something the public doesn’t know,” Mr. Tresnjak said. “That doesn’t mean no interpretation. But the focus should be on clear storytelling and characterizations. That is of utmost importance.”

“Las Meninas,” Velázquez’s seminal 1656 painting depicting life at the court of King Philip IV of Spain, inspired the designs for “Der Zwerg.” For “Der Zerbrochene Krug,” which opens the program, the setting is a Dutch village square rather than the provincial courtroom called for in Kleist’s play, but the action remains in the early 19th century.

Mr. Tresnjak initially presented Mr. Conlon with three options for the Zemlinsky opera. “I said, ‘Here’s the Velázquez version, the 1920s version and the contemporary Los Angeles version,’ ” Mr. Tresnjak recalled. “I made the case for all three. Ultimately James felt most strongly about the Velázquez version, as did I, because that’s what I heard in the music. From those opening chords I saw that painting.”

But artistic vision alone does not get operas produced. Money is necessary, and lots of it. Marilyn Ziering, a philanthropist and a member of the Los Angeles Opera board with an interest in Jewish causes, made the initial gift to “Recovered Voices” in late 2006, donating $3.25 million and raising $750,000 from family and friends. Then, a year ago, the company produced a well-received preview program as prelude to the imminent double bill.

Mr. Conlon promises one production per season, with “Die Vögel” (“The Birds”) by Braunfels scheduled for next year and “Die Gezeichneten” (“The Stigmatized”) by Schreker planned for 2010.

Will the financing keep pace? For now, the company says, the “Recovered Voices” fund is at $4.85 million and growing.

“I would love to see the music of these composers played in every great opera house,” Mrs. Ziering said. “I want people to see the beauty of what was lost, and how much more beauty there could have been if we lived in a kinder world.”

Mr. Conlon, a son of left-leaning Roman Catholics, takes a more confrontational approach when it comes to giving these composers a fair hearing.

“All my life questions of social justice and injustice have been very alive in my consciousness,” he said. “This is what I think fires me up more than anything else, the anger that in the 60 or 70 years since these events occurred, the perpetrators succeeded in wiping out any trace of the art of these people. You cannot undo the injustice of the lost lives or the cruelty. But in the case of the composers you can do the one thing that would have meant the most to them, which is to perform their music.”

CHICAGO JEWISH NEWS (06/29/2007)

Unlike the first two composers in the Ravinia Festival's "Breaking the Silence" series, Alexander Zemlinsky did not perish during the Holocaust. He was its victim nevertheless. That's why Ravinia's music director, James Conlon, programmed Zemlinsky's music for this season's "Breaking the Silence," which Conlon inaugurated at the summer music venue to allow audiences to hear the works of Jewish composers whose artistic voices were silenced by the Nazis. Conlon considers Zemlinsky the greatest of those composers and one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, he said during a recent phone conversation from Bologna, Italy, where he was concluding a conducting job before returning to Chicago for the opening of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's summer residency at Ravinia. It was hearing Zemlinsky's music, Conlon says, that led to his interest in composers silenced by the Holocaust. "He was the starting point. I fell in love with his music in the early '90s," he says. Conlon vaguely knew of Zemlinsky because the composer was the brother-in-law of modernist composer Arnold Schonberg and a member of Gustav Mahler's artistic circle in the early part of the 20th century. In fact, one of Zemlinsky's students, who was also his lover, was the legendary Alma Schindler, who later married Mahler. Conlon, however, had never heard any of Zemlinsky's music until one night when he turned on his car radio and heard a beautiful, unfamiliar piece. He stayed in his car listening until the end, when he discovered it was "The Mermaid," a tone poem by Zemlinsky. He was so impressed he began seeking out more works by the composer. Conlon will conduct "The Mermaid" at Ravinia on Aug. 12, one of three concerts that will feature works by Zemlinsky. The piece has also been chosen as this year's One Score, One Chicago selection. In this program, Ravinia partners with the Shedd Aquarium, Chicago Public Library, Chicago Botanic Garden and Kohl Children's Museum to explore a single musical masterpiece. "The Mermaid" is the centerpiece in a yearlong exploration of "Water Works," which examines the place of water in music, art and urban life, especially in Chicago. After Conlon heard more Zemlinsky pieces, he set about recording many of them. In addition, finding the works of a virtually unknown composer launched him on his search for more such composers and sparked the "Breaking the Silence" project. "We think, if we haven't heard of it it isn't good. If it's unknown it deserves to be unknown," Conlon says. "These are our cliches and we live with them. But I thought, if Zemlinsky's music is this good there's a likelihood there's a lot more (by other composers) out there, and it turned out there was. But personally I'd be tempted to say that Zemlinsky is the greatest of the 'Breaking the Silence' composers." Alexander Zemlinsky was born into a Sephardic family that traced its roots to pre-1492 Spain. Although he studied Hebrew and Hebraic music, he became a part of a Viennese circle that consisted of many highly assimilated Jewish musicians and artists. Better known as a teacher and conductor than a composer, he realized early on what the rise of Nazism in Germany meant and tried to flee-twice. In 1934 he left his home in Vienna and moved to Berlin, where he obtained a position as the conductor of an opera company. But the Nazis also came to Berlin, and in 1938 he and his wife immigrated to Prague, then to the Untied States, where he first settled in Manhattan, later moving to Larchmont, N.Y. "This was the saddest part of his story," Conlon says. "He was already in his 60s, he didn't speak English, and nobody knew him or cared about him." Schonberg lived on the West Coast; other of his champions, who included both Brahms and Mahler, were of an older generation and had already died. Zemlinsky wrote no music after he came to the United States and with one exception never saw any of his works performed, Conlon says. "He lived out his life ignored" and died at age 71. "He was an extraordinarily gifted man who had a good deal of success as a conductor but a lot of bad luck in terms of promoting his music," he says. "The tragedies (of the Holocaust) are not limited to those who died in concentration camps," Conlon says. "The horrendous crimes of the Nazis can be measured in many ways. They destroyed the art of so many composers, writers and painters based on their racist policies, and today we are all the losers." The "good news," he says, is that "the art is actually there. People need to perform it and to hear it, and that's where I come in." He'll be conducting the CSO in three works by Zemlinsky this summer at Ravinia in addition to a special "Zemlinsky Showcase" in Bennett Gordon Hall on July 14. The first program, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 7, will include the composer's "Lyric Symphony," a set of seven poems set to music for soprano and baritone that Conlon calls Zemlinsky's masterpiece. "It follows the curve of a love relationship from inception to finale," he says. "It is very romantic, erotic, beautiful and deeply moving, written in the early '20s at the height of his abilities." Christine Brewer and Bo Skovhus will be the singers. The second selection, "A Florentine Tragedy," performed at 8 p.m. Wednesday, July 11, is one of a number of short operas Zemlinsky wrote and is based on a story by Oscar Wilde. "It has a powerful score with a shocking, ironic Wildean twist to the end of the story," Conlon says. And, like "The Mermaid," this one incorporates elements of Zemlinsky's personal life, especially his love affair with the woman who would later become notorious as Alma Mahler. Zemlinsky "was the first of a line of geniuses she was in love with," Conlon says. "She dumped him, and his heart was broken. In 'The Mermaid,' he identifies himself with the mermaid who has to sublimate his lost love, where the renunciation of love becomes a rededication to art, which was also a favorite subject of Mahler's." "The Mermaid," which was inspired by a Hans Christian Andersen story but also draws on the composer's relationship with Alma Mahler, will be performed at 5 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 12. Chicagoans who come to the concerts should be prepared to hear "big, expansive, deeply emotional music and extraordinary writing for the orchestra. This is very powerful, erotic, romantic music. Zemlinsky loved the human voice, loved text, loved love. This is a really special summer, people shouldn't miss it. They are going to love it-the chance to hear one of the great composers of the 20th century," he says. Meanwhile, the "Breaking the Silence" series will continue next summer and the summer after that and beyond, Conlon says. "It is not a project but a mission," he says. "It will outlive me. At the end of my life it will not be done. It's not just a question of playing these composers' music once. It will take a generation to get it integrated into the repertory." The "Breaking the Silence" concerts take place July 7 and 11 and Aug. 12, with the Zemlinsky Showcase (no lawn seating) July 14 at the Ravinia Festival, 418 Sheridan Road, Highland Park. Lawn seating $10, for other prices and tickets call (847) 266-5100 or go to www.ravinia.org.

Conductor James Conlon calls it a weekend job, but his campaign to present music that was suppressed by the Nazi regime is much more important than a moonlighting gig. Tonight, he takes his cause to the stage at the Juilliard School, where he has embarked on a two-year residency exploring, as he puts it, what happens "when the classical arts clash with sociopolitical environment." And if they ever did clash, the years of Nazi power offer the most brutal example of what happens. Some of the most talented composers, such as Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Kurt Weill, were forced to emigrate. Others were sent to concentration camps and killed, among them Hans Krasa and Viktor Ullmann. Walter Braunfels remained in Germany but spend the war as a recluse. All are becoming better-known, thanks in part to Mr. Conlon's efforts.

Mr. Conlon's goal, as he describes it, is "to get the music out there and reintegrate it into the tradition from which it came. I want to make these composers' names known and make their stories known, which can provide a point of entry."

Thursday's program "Recovered Voices," which repeats through December 16, includes music by Franz Schreker, Erwin Schulhoff, and Alexander Zemlinsky. Schreker, whose operas have been revived in Europe with much success but have yet to be staged in America, died in 1934, the year after the Nazis came to power. His once flourishing career was already in decline — he had been forced to vacate his post as director of the Berlin Hochschule. Schulhoff, who was not only Jewish but an avid Communist, was arrested in 1942 and sent to the Wülzburg camp, where he died of tuberculosis in 1942. Zemlinsky, the brother-in-law of Arnold Schoenberg, was rejected in love by the future Alma Mahler, probably because of his physical ugliness, a theme he developed in his opera "Der Zwerg."

Mr. Conlon urges prospective listeners not to fall back on the old saw that if music has been neglected, there is an artistic reason. "Some people equated Zemlinsky with Wagner. They may have exaggerated but he is an important composer," Mr. Conlon said. "Schulhoff wrote classical music incorporating jazz before Gershwin and music for pure percussion before Varèse. Yes, they struggled, but history has shown that composers struggle."

These composers also lost out, Mr. Conlon notes, because of a progress-oriented way of looking at history. Most of them flourished when Schoenberg and his circle embraced atonality and developed the 12-tone system of composition. Such music was also proscribed by the Nazis, but it eventually became accepted throughout the West as the logical next step beyond complex chromatic music. "Music became dominated by that orthodoxy," Mr. Conlon said.

The upcoming program at Juilliard will consist not only of music, but dance as well. "Using pieces from the period as the basis for new dance will force people to hear music that they would not otherwise hear. "

Schulhoff's "Ogelala" actually was conceived as a ballet; the Juilliard performances will be its America premiere. The two other works were originally purely orchestral compositions. Zemlinsky's last major work, "Sinfonietta," will be presented in the manner of Stravinsky's symphonies that were performed as ballets. Schreker's Prelude to a Drama: "Die Gezeichneten" is an expanded version of the prelude to the opera. "It is very opulent and well suited for choreography," Mr. Conlon said.

Mr. Conlon — who has refocused his career in America after a long stint in Europe that included the music directorship of the Paris Opera — will continue his crusade at the Los Angeles Opera, where he is music director. This season includes a double bill of Ullmann's "Der zerbrochene Krug" and Zemlinsky's "Der Zwerg"; Braunfels's "Die Vögel" follows the next season, and in the 2009-2010 season "Die Gezeichneten" will mark the first American staging of a Schreker opera.

During his residency at Juilliard, Mr. Conlon plans to take up other issues in a various forums, including public lectures. "We'll look at censorship, such as that experienced by Verdi, as well as more subtle factors, like the box office, which determines what's heard and what isn't," he said.

And his session on American education, with its move away from "frills," like music, in the 1980s, is sure to be contentious. "Society at large has really dropped the ball here, and the problem cannot be solved by arts institutions themselves."

In addition to the dance program, Mr. Conlon will conduct chamber works this spring, a trio of one-act operas in fall 2008, and an orchestral concert in 2009.

Mr. Conlon's work on composers suppressed by the Nazis brings unexpected rewards. "A woman once called to say that Zemlinsky and Ullmann used to have lunch at her home in Prague and wondered if I would like to talk about it. I sent a car for her at once. She was the daughter of the director of the Prague Conservatory and remembered both," he said.

As she recalled, Zemlinsky's appearance frightened the children. "About the only performer now who remembers Zemlinsky is Risë Stevens. She went to Prague in the mid-'30s and sang 'Carmen' with him conducting in 1938, before her father ordered her home because a war was about to start," Mr. Conlon said. "She remembers Zemlinsky as being disappointed and depressed, maybe because he was not doing one of his own operas." The political situation no doubt had something to do with it, too.

Ambitious Project Includes December Dance Creations, With Choreography Set to 'Recovered Voices' Composers

As James Conlon makes his way through the Juilliard hallways, every few steps someone greets him warmly, saying, “Hello, Maestro.” Nearly 40 years after he first navigated these hallways as a freshman, the internationally acclaimed conductor has returned to initiate an ambitious, wide-ranging two-year residency that reflects the impassioned commitment that has marked his exemplary career. Beginning with this month’s dance performances, Conlon will conduct programs involving all three divisions, while also devoting time to coaching, leading master classes, and participating in symposia.

In the course of these varied activities, Conlon will focus on aspects of classical music, and concerns about its place in contemporary society, that have been of paramount concern to him and are reflected in many of his recent projects. A major focus of the residency will be the music of composers whose careers were cut short, and reputations severely diminished, by the Nazi regime and its classification of their work as “degenerate art.” Conlon has been enthusiastically championing their scores for the past 15 years, often programming them when he guest-conducts and, in his role as music director of Los Angeles Opera and the Ravinia Festival, designing ongoing projects to bring their music to new audiences. At Juilliard, Conlon’s residency will also examine the classical artist’s relationship to, and role within, contemporary society.

Shortly after a week of conducting the New York Philharmonic, which followed his performances of Fidelio and Jenufa in Los Angeles, Conlon, 57, settled into a Juilliard conference room and spoke with fervor about what he intends to explore over the next two years. “The big subject is, what happens when classical art clashes with the society in which it finds itself? I’m going to use the events of the 1930s and ‘40s in Europe—specifically Germany, but we will have programs where we can compare it with Paris, which was outside the influence of the Third Reich, for a long time. We’re going to look at that period and see what happens when something gets lost. Can it be refound, resuscitated, 50 or 70 years after that fact? Then the questions that flow from that are: you can’t second-guess history, but what might have happened if—and what were the currents that were alive that might have altered the history of classical music had they not been uprooted? Why have we arrived at certain conclusions about the 20th century, about who was important and who had the most influence—whereas it might have been quite different. We’re going to look at all of those questions. I don’t know if we’ll have answers.”

An additional topic to be explored is classical music’s relationship to our own society, says Conlon—the factors that are influencing its production and appreciation, and the vibrancy of the classical tradition. “How is society affecting that? Are we affecting society? Are we just a very small cocoon that is trying to survive? What happens when there are factors in society that actively clash with the nourishing of this tradition?”

Conlon recalls that when Joseph W. Polisi, Juilliard’s president, approached him about the residency, he said, “I want to have you come here and take an idea and run with it. Tell me what you might want to do.” Conlon’s response: “I want to work with every department, because I don’t want it to be narrow. I want it to be broad—it’s about the arts, all of us. It’s also a reminder (and I know Joseph is very strong on this) that students are not here just to learn how to play their instruments, or dance, or act. They’re also here to realize that artists have a role in society. Society needs them—even if society doesn’t know it needs them. That consciousness needs to be raised, at the time of being a student.”

Conlon’s undergraduate years (1968 to 1972) overlapped with the height of antiwar protesting at many universities and increased political activism throughout the country. “During my years as a Juilliard student, I would say the one thing lacking was that approach to seeing whatever we were studying as very important in itself, but also important in a greater context. I was a student here at a time of ferment; in some ways, there was a greater context imposed on us. There were a lot of us who were active and thoughtful on that subject—not enough, as far as I was concerned. Now, it is a conservatory, and I completely agree that you’ve got to devote those years to mastering your instrument. But I think Joseph [Polisi] has done a great job of changing a lot about the School from what I remember from when I entered, and I want to participate in that.”

Conlon—who during his senior year stepped in when a major conductor became unavailable to conduct a 1972 Juilliard La Bohème production, and who even before graduating had conducted Boris Godunov at Italy’s famed Spoleto Festival—has had a career divided more or less equally between Europe and America. From 1983 to 2004, he was based in Europe, serving as music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Cologne Opera, and the Paris Opera. Since 2004, the native New Yorker has been based here, though still traveling all over for his multifaceted engagements.

His passionate interest in the composers silenced by the Nazi regime has led to many performances and recordings for which he has conducted major scores that had languished unheard for decades, in the process awakening audiences to their high caliber and significant connections to other music of their time. At the Los Angeles Opera, he has initiated the Recovered Voices project, scheduling a production each season—this year, it will be a double bill of works by Alexander Zemlinsky and Viktor Ullmann. His recent New York Philharmonic program featured the orchestra’s first performances of Zemlinsky’s A Florentine Tragedy, a powerful one-act opera based on an Oscar Wilde play.

It was Zemlinsky (1871-1942) who launched Conlon’s abiding (and now influential) interest in this group of composers. During his Cologne tenure, he heard one of the composer’s scores on the radio and became entranced. He had been familiar with the name of this major musical figure whose students included Schoenberg (who became his brother-in-law), Berg, Webern, and Korngold—but not his music. “One day you discover that there’s a real person, real music, behind the name. That real music is beautiful, interesting, and thrilling,” he says. Soon he was recording one Zemlinsky composition after another for EMI, and learning about additional important composers whose output had been banned—and denied its place in musical history—because of the Nazis’ intolerance. “I love this music, it stimulates me, and I have also found that I will go back to it over and over, which means I’m able to perform it in a committed way.

"Most of it is there on paper (some has been lost, but a great deal is there), but isn’t performed," continues Conlon. "Classical music really enters civilization when it is heard and experienced by people, and people react to it—discuss it, then hear it again, new interpretation—that’s how classical music regenerates. That was completely impossible for those banned composers. We’re not just talking about music written between 1933 and 1945. It was retroactive. Most of them were Jewish; every Jewish composer was banned—including Mendelssohn. Because the music wasn’t heard, it has remained under the radar—certainly in this country—for 60 years. In Germany, there was a real attempt to take consciousness of this during the 1970s.”

The three choreographers creating new works for December Dance Creations are setting them to scores selected from the "Recovered Voices" group. Conlon suggested possible compositions to Lawrence Rhodes, artistic director of the Dance Division, who then presented options to the choreographers and matched them up with scores. “When people see choreography and hear the music—they take in that music in a very special way. I think it’s a very powerful way to get these composers to be able to speak to our audiences,” Conlon observes. “I want to find every possible avenue through which this music will be heard and live.”

Adam Hougland, a Juilliard alumnus, has choreographed to Franz Schreker’s Prelude to a Drama: Die Gezeichneten, an expansion of what began as an overture to the 1918 opera, whose title translates as “The Stigmatized.” “It’s almost a symphonic poem, with very evocative and original orchestration,” says Conlon, who in 2010 will conduct the opera’s first-ever U.S. production in Los Angeles. “It’s not meant to be played before the opera, which is an extremely intricate psychodrama set in Renaissance Italy, but to stand by itself.” Schreker (1878-1934) was one of the most highly regarded operatic composers of his time, as well as director of Berlin’s Music Academy.

Hougland did not refer to the opera’s libretto, but instead listened extensively to the score. “I find it very atmospheric and moody—almost dreamlike,” he says. “It reminded me of watching birds in flight, in the clouds—that was my first image. I found it intriguing to think about the idea of uncovering voices. The piece itself has that feel. It starts out very formal, the dancers moving as one giant, faceless mass. As the piece goes on, I deviate from that and let individuals emerge. It’s not often you have a chance to create for such a large group of dancers, and I wanted to play with ways of moving the whole group like one giant organism.”

Nicolo Fonte is choreographing to Zemlinsky’s 1934 Sinfonietta, the composer’s last major orchestral work, and his only piece to be performed in this country—by the New York Philharmonic, Dmitri Mitropoulos conducting—during the brief time he lived in New York, following his escape from the Nazis. “I immediately loved the Sinfonietta, for its danceability factor," says Fonte. “It was angular in places, then very lush and lyrical in others. That’s what I connected to immediately. The Adagio is gorgeous—really mysterious and lush. The first movement, Presto, is thrilling music. It gives me images of people flying in the air. The dance, on some level, deals with the idea of bursting free, of a kind of ultimate freedom. I hear that in the score—this desire to free oneself from constrictions.”

Ogelala, the 1925 Erwin Schulhoff score that Juilliard alumnus Robert Battle is choreographing, is the one composition that was originally written for dance, making it a natural choice for this program. The Czech composer, born in 1894, died of tuberculosis in the Wülzburg concentration camp in 1942. “I consider Schulhoff one of the most interesting avant-garde composers of that period. notes Conlon, who conducted the score’s U.S. premiere last year in Aspen. He wrote Dadaist music, and was one of the first composers to integrate jazz—before Gershwin, before Milhaud. This work, to me, is an extraordinary piece of vital, rhythmic music.”

Battle did some research into the original ballet’s scenario, which dealt with a pre-Colombian Mexican warrior, but says, “I really didn’t connect much to the story; I connected more to the music. I thought it was rhythmically and dramatically the kind of orchestral music I like. You find so many influences and colors in the score. After I said yes, fear was the overwhelming reaction—this music is so difficult. It’s over 30 minutes, and that’s a condensed version. The rhythmic elements are quite genius. It must be changing meters and time signatures all the time. I feel like I have this silent partner in this choreography that is Erwin Schulhoff. I certainly feel his presence in the score.”

Conlon’s multifaceted residency includes three chamber concerts in April, “Generate and Degenerate Music,” presenting in chronological order works created between 1916 and 1931, offering an opportunity to contrast those by Paris-based composers and those whom the Nazis silenced. A forum in conjunction with the concerts will examine these musicians’ contrasting lives and fates. And next November, Conlon will conduct a trilogy of one-act operas by Mussorgsky, Ernst Krenek, and Veniamin Fleischmann.

As he outlines his hopes and expectations for his residency, Conlon not only conveys the fascinating possibilities of re-evaluating a neglected group of composers, but also touches on issues of censorship, the possibilities and dangers offered by new technology, and concerns about present-day educational priorities. Clearly, this former student’s return will enliven Juilliard’s next two years with a great many stimulating musical events and discussions.

Susan Reiter is a freelance journalist who covers dance for New York Press, Danceviewtimes.com, and other publications.

By By John von Rhein

If we recognize Alexander Zemlinsky's name at all these days, it's usually as the teacher and brother-in-law of composer Arnold Schoenberg.

But he was a significant figure in Central European musical life before the Nazis seized power, and only in recent decades has his music been getting a fair hearing.

You can catch what is perhaps the Viennese composer's best-known work, his "Lyric Symphony," Saturday when music director James Conlon leads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in its Ravinia Festival premiere.

If you enjoy Mahler's music, you'll enjoy this lush vocal and orchestral setting of seven poems by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, written in 1923.

With high-powered soloists Christine Brewer and Bo Skovhus, this promises to be a high point of the Ravinia season.

Saturday's concert is the opening gun of a Zemlinsky festival-within-a-festival.

Conlon is presiding over four programs of his orchestral, vocal and chamber music as part of Ravinia's multi-year "Breaking the Silence" survey of works suppressed by the Third Reich.

Highlighting Wednesday's CSO program will be a concert performance of Zemlinsky's one-act opera, "A Florentine Tragedy" (1915-16), based on a steamy tale by Oscar Wilde of sexual revenge and murder.

Conlon also will host a "Zemlinsky Showcase" concert exploring the composer's vocal and chamber works, July 14, before wrapping things up Aug. 12 with another Ravinia premiere, that of the tone poem, "The Mermaid" (1902-03), the centerpiece of the fest's 2007 celebration of "water works."

Because Zemlinsky was Jewish, he left Germany in 1933. Though seriously ill, he managed to immigrate to America in 1939 and died an almost forgotten man there three years later, at 71.

Zemlinsky never fought for recognition as a composer, much less for revolutionary advances in music.

Even while he was alive, Zemlinsky's works were disparaged in modernist circles because they clung to tonal harmony and the emotionally intense manner he inherited from Mahler.

His eventual falling out with Schoenberg owed partly to his refusal to adopt the latter's 12-tone system of composition.

Ironically enough, it was Schoenberg who pleaded for Zemlinsky to be accorded a place of honor in 20th Century music. "Perhaps his time will come sooner than one thinks," wrote Schoenberg in 1949.

Nearly 60 years later, a serious reappraisal of Zemlinsky is overdue.

Music of Alexander Zemlinsky A fair hearing for a neglected composer

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday (also Wednesday, July 14 and Aug. 12) Where: Ravinia Festival, 200-231 Ravinia Park Rd., Highland Park Price: $20-$60, $10 lawn; 847-266-5100

By Kevin Shihoten

Conductor James Conlon will begin a two-year residency at the Juilliard School this fall, collaborating with students in each of the school's three divisions — dance, drama and music.

Examining societal influences on art, Conlon will focus on the repertoire of composers affected by Nazism and World War II and on the contemporary role of the artist, working through coaching sessions, lectures, master classes and performances.

The first of the concerts included in Conlon's Juilliard residency, given this December, will offer premieres of recently commissioned choreography set to Franz Schreker's Die Gezeichneten, Erwin Schulhoff's Ogelala and Alexander Zemlinsky's Sinfonietta.

Three chamber performances in April 2008 will feature works classified under the Nazi regime's 1937 policy as degenerate art, or entartete Kunst, and as "generative art." Conlon will conduct ensembles in works ranging from Schreker's 1916 Kammersymphonie to Poulenc's Concerto choréographique (1931); the series will also include works by Georges Antheil, Hanns Eisler, Pavel Haas, Paul Hindemith, Hans Krása, Bohuslav Martinu, Darius Milhaud, Schulhoff, Igor Stravinsky and Edgar Varèse. A related forum titled "Generative and Degenerate Music" is also planned.

In November of 2008 Conlon will conduct three rarely-performed one-act operas: Modest Mussorgsky's comic opera Zhenit'ba ("The Marriage"), Ernst Krenek's Schwergewicht, oder die Ehre der Nation ("Heavyweight, or the Pride of the Nation") and Veniamin Fleischmann's Skripka Rotshil'da ("Rothschild's Violin").

For the past several years Conlon has made the revival of music suppressed by the Nazi government one of the main focuses of his career.

During the spring of 2009, Conlon will lead the Juillliard Orchestra in a concert marking the finale of his residency, featuring the world premiere of a work by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.

By Pauline Dubkin Yearwood June 29, 2007

Unlike the first two composers in the Ravinia Festival's "Breaking the Silence" series, Alexander Zemlinsky did not perish during the Holocaust.

He was its victim nevertheless.

That's why Ravinia's music director, James Conlon, programmed Zemlinsky's music for this season's "Breaking the Silence," which Conlon inaugurated at the summer music venue to allow audiences to hear the works of Jewish composers whose artistic voices were silenced by the Nazis.

Conlon considers Zemlinsky the greatest of those composers and one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, he said during a recent phone conversation from Bologna, Italy, where he was concluding a conducting job before returning to Chicago for the opening of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's summer residency at Ravinia.

It was hearing Zemlinsky's music, Conlon says, that led to his interest in composers silenced by the Holocaust. "He was the starting point. I fell in love with his music in the early '90s," he says.

Conlon vaguely knew of Zemlinsky because the composer was the brother-in-law of modernist composer Arnold Schonberg and a member of Gustav Mahler's artistic circle in the early part of the 20th century. In fact, one of Zemlinsky's students, who was also his lover, was the legendary Alma Schindler, who later married Mahler.

Conlon, however, had never heard any of Zemlinsky's music until one night when he turned on his car radio and heard a beautiful, unfamiliar piece. He stayed in his car listening until the end, when he discovered it was "The Mermaid," a tone poem by Zemlinsky. He was so impressed he began seeking out more works by the composer.

Conlon will conduct "The Mermaid" at Ravinia on Aug. 12, one of three concerts that will feature works by Zemlinsky. The piece has also been chosen as this year's One Score, One Chicago selection. In this program, Ravinia partners with the Shedd Aquarium, Chicago Public Library, Chicago Botanic Garden and Kohl Children's Museum to explore a single musical masterpiece. "The Mermaid" is the centerpiece in a yearlong exploration of "Water Works," which examines the place of water in music, art and urban life, especially in Chicago.

After Conlon heard more Zemlinsky pieces, he set about recording many of them. In addition, finding the works of a virtually unknown composer launched him on his search for more such composers and sparked the "Breaking the Silence" project.

"We think, if we haven't heard of it it isn't good. If it's unknown it deserves to be unknown," Conlon says. "These are our cliches and we live with them. But I thought, if Zemlinsky's music is this good there's a likelihood there's a lot more (by other composers) out there, and it turned out there was. But personally I'd be tempted to say that Zemlinsky is the greatest of the 'Breaking the Silence' composers."

Alexander Zemlinsky was born into a Sephardic family that traced its roots to pre-1492 Spain. Although he studied Hebrew and Hebraic music, he became a part of a Viennese circle that consisted of many highly assimilated Jewish musicians and artists. Better known as a teacher and conductor than a composer, he realized early on what the rise of Nazism in Germany meant and tried to flee-twice. In 1934 he left his home in Vienna and moved to Berlin, where he obtained a position as the conductor of an opera company.

But the Nazis also came to Berlin, and in 1938 he and his wife immigrated to Prague, then to the Untied States, where he first settled in Manhattan, later moving to Larchmont, N.Y.

"This was the saddest part of his story," Conlon says. "He was already in his 60s, he didn't speak English, and nobody knew him or cared about him." Schonberg lived on the West Coast; other of his champions, who included both Brahms and Mahler, were of an older generation and had already died.

Zemlinsky wrote no music after he came to the United States and with one exception never saw any of his works performed, Conlon says. "He lived out his life ignored" and died at age 71.

"He was an extraordinarily gifted man who had a good deal of success as a conductor but a lot of bad luck in terms of promoting his music," he says.

"The tragedies (of the Holocaust) are not limited to those who died in concentration camps," Conlon says. "The horrendous crimes of the Nazis can be measured in many ways. They destroyed the art of so many composers, writers and painters based on their racist policies, and today we are all the losers."

The "good news," he says, is that "the art is actually there. People need to perform it and to hear it, and that's where I come in."

He'll be conducting the CSO in three works by Zemlinsky this summer at Ravinia in addition to a special "Zemlinsky Showcase" in Bennett Gordon Hall on July 14. The first program, at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 7, will include the composer's "Lyric Symphony," a set of seven poems set to music for soprano and baritone that Conlon calls Zemlinsky's masterpiece.

"It follows the curve of a love relationship from inception to finale," he says. "It is very romantic, erotic, beautiful and deeply moving, written in the early '20s at the height of his abilities." Christine Brewer and Bo Skovhus will be the singers.

The second selection, "A Florentine Tragedy," performed at 8 p.m. Wednesday, July 11, is one of a number of short operas Zemlinsky wrote and is based on a story by Oscar Wilde. "It has a powerful score with a shocking, ironic Wildean twist to the end of the story," Conlon says. And, like "The Mermaid," this one incorporates elements of Zemlinsky's personal life, especially his love affair with the woman who would later become notorious as Alma Mahler.

Zemlinsky "was the first of a line of geniuses she was in love with," Conlon says. "She dumped him, and his heart was broken. In 'The Mermaid,' he identifies himself with the mermaid who has to sublimate his lost love, where the renunciation of love becomes a rededication to art, which was also a favorite subject of Mahler's."

"The Mermaid," which was inspired by a Hans Christian Andersen story but also draws on the composer's relationship with Alma Mahler, will be performed at 5 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 12.

Chicagoans who come to the concerts should be prepared to hear "big, expansive, deeply emotional music and extraordinary writing for the orchestra. This is very powerful, erotic, romantic music. Zemlinsky loved the human voice, loved text, loved love. This is a really special summer, people shouldn't miss it. They are going to love it-the chance to hear one of the great composers of the 20th century," he says.

Meanwhile, the "Breaking the Silence" series will continue next summer and the summer after that and beyond, Conlon says. "It is not a project but a mission," he says. "It will outlive me. At the end of my life it will not be done. It's not just a question of playing these composers' music once. It will take a generation to get it integrated into the repertory."

The "Breaking the Silence" concerts take place July 7 and 11 and Aug. 12, with the Zemlinsky Showcase (no lawn seating) July 14 at the Ravinia Festival, 418 Sheridan Road, Highland Park. Lawn seating $10, for other prices and tickets call (847) 266-5100 or go to www.ravinia.org.