About the work
"Der Kreidekreis" ("The Chalk Circle") is an opera in three acts by Alexander (von) Zemlinsky, based on the play of the same name by Klabund, which in turn draws on the old Chinese legend of the chalk-circle judgement. Zemlinsky wrote the libretto himself, leaving Klabund's text largely unchanged, and composed the work in 1930/31; it premiered on 14 October 1933 at the Stadttheater Zurich, after the Nazi seizure of power had prevented the originally planned simultaneous premieres in several German cities.
Plot
Haitang, a tea-house girl, becomes the second wife of the tax collector Ma, whose first wife remains childless. After Ma is murdered, both women claim Haitang's young son; the newly enthroned emperor – once Haitang's admirer, Prince Pao – has the true mother determined by the chalk circle that gives the opera its title: whoever pulls the child from the drawn circle without hurting him is the true mother. Haitang's refusal to hurt the boy proves her motherhood, and she herself is raised to empress.
Cultural significance
The simultaneous premieres planned in several German cities for spring 1933 were thwarted by the Nazi regime, which persecuted Zemlinsky as a Jewish composer; isolated German performances in early 1934 were soon suppressed, after which the work largely disappeared from the stage for decades. Since a revival at Zurich Opera House in 2003 and further productions, for instance at the Opéra de Lyon in 2018 and at Deutsche Oper am Rhein, the opera is regarded as one of the major stage works of Zemlinsky's late creative period.