About the work
"De temporum fine comoedia – The Play of the End of Time" is Carl Orff's last major stage work, a choral opera-oratorio on the end of time. Orff wrote the text himself, in a mixture of Ancient Greek, Latin and German, drawing partly on the Sibylline prophecies. Herbert von Karajan conducted the premiere on 20 August 1973 in the Großes Festspielhaus of the Salzburg Festival, staged by August Everding.
Plot
Choruses of ancient sibyls praise God as creator of the world while simultaneously proclaiming the Last Judgement, in which he judges the living and the dead and destroys the cosmos in a storm of fire to punish human folly and greed. At the close, Lucifer, the "bringer of light," presides over the scene's peaceful resolution.
Cultural significance
The work sums up Orff's lifelong effort to present Greco-Roman antiquity and Christianity, the two foundations of Western thought, within a single "theatrum mundi." Regarded as his spiritual testament, it remains rarely staged and was revived at the 2022 Salzburg Festival under Teodor Currentzis in a production by Romeo Castellucci.