An opera returns to Germany.

Since 1941 the score of the piece had been in a box in California, together with the sheet music for a string quartet, several songs and a few letters.

The fact that the contents of the box went unnoticed for so long has to do with the bitter history of its creator.

Eugen Engel, a merchant and composer of Jewish descent, was murdered in the Sobibor extermination camp in 1943.

But his daughter Eva managed to escape to the United States – with a box full of her father's works and a past that the daughter no longer wanted to touch on.

Eva died in 2006, after which her daughter, that is, the composer's granddaughter, began to deal with the grandfather.

Contacts were made with Germany (Engel had lived in Berlin), participation in the "Stolpersteine" project by the artist Gunter Demnig was initiated, and an acquaintance of the conductor Anna Skryleva became aware of the composer.

The piano reduction ended up in Skrylevas hands, back then, in 2019, she was preparing for her new job as general music director in Magdeburg.

The play "Grete Minde" based on Theodor Fontane's story seemed promising to her when she played it through. A look at the score, which was sent to her from California shortly afterwards, confirmed the assumption that it was a large-scale stage work of late Romantic character.

Always armed with a score to the opera

The general manager of the Theater Magdeburg, Karen Stone, finally took action, performance material was extracted from the composer's handwritten, clean score and a huge stage machinery was organized.

In addition to the orchestra the size of Richard Strauss, with three woodwinds, six horns, celesta and glockenspiel, there is also incidental music: instrumental groups, church bells, organ playing, plus thirteen vocal roles and a choir, which has numerous appearances.

A children's choir that is also planned in Magdeburg has to be dispensed with due to the corona; the sopranos will take over.

A composer's megalomania or an unconditional will to express himself?

The world premiere of the nearly three-hour work this Sunday (a recording will be broadcast by Deutschlandfunk Kultur on February 19 at 7 p.m.) will help answer the question.

In any case, a look at the score reveals a composer who knows how to orchestrate in a differentiated way, who deals confidently with the effects of music theater and follows his role models: Richard Wagner above all, whose "Meistersinger" repeatedly shines through the score of "Grete Minde". up to the citation indicated with a footnote.

Also Richard Strauss, whose art of multi-layered tonal color composition Engel clearly takes as a template.

When Engel turned to Bruno Walter in 1936 when he was looking for a performance opportunity,