Flammen

Homage to Mozart of a special kind: in his approach to the Don Juan myth, Schulhoff does not portray the libertine as a sexual predator, but as a figure eternally driven by desire. In contrast to Mozart’s Don Giovanni, the hero is not sent to hell but, like Wagner’s Flying Dutchman, is condemned to an eternal search for love and redemption. Two archaic principles, the "flames" of life (symbolised by the male figure of Don Juan) and the "flames" of death (represented by the female figure La Morte), yearn to be unified, but mutually repel each other. Man and woman, life and death, yearning and fulfilment and hope and resignation are set in Erwin Schulhoff’s only work for the stage as bold dualisms in a fascinating interplay.