Emperor Overall rules Atlantis as a tyrant. When he finally declares a war of all against all, Death decides to lay down his work. In an act of populist demagoguery, the Emperor presents himself as the inventor of immortality. But without Death, the land descends into chaos. The Emperor must realize that his power is broken.

In the face of persecution and annihilation by the National Socialists, Viktor Ullmann composed his Emperor of Atlantisin 1943/44 in the Theresienstadt concentration camp — a harrowing allegory against inhumane warmongering and totalitarian power structures. In October 1944, Ullmann — like his co-librettist Peter Kien — was deported with the so-called “artist transport” to Auschwitz and murdered. Shifting between Zeitoper, mystery play, and danse macabre, The Emperor of Atlantis unfolds a unique theatrical soundscape.

For the premiere of KaiserRequiem, conductor Omer Meir Wellber has created an unusual intertwining of Ullmann’s nearly sixty-minute chamber opera with perhaps the most famous torso in music history: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s musical legacy, the Requiem in D minor, K. 626 — composed in 1791 in the face of his own death and cut short by death itself. KaiserRequiem is a dialogue between these two works on the great questions of human existence. At the same time, KaiserRequiem is a collaboration of all the house’s artistic divisions: the dancers of the Vienna State Ballet, soloists, as well as the chorus and orchestra of the Volksoper Wien, in the direction and choreography of Andreas Heise