About the work
"Der Mond" ("The Moon") is Carl Orff's "little world theatre" based on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale of the stolen moon, for which Orff also wrote the libretto. He composed the roughly hour-long piece in 1937/38, closely tied to the sound world of his educational Schulwerk, and saw it as a deliberate farewell to musical Romanticism. Clemens Krauss conducted the premiere on 5 February 1939 at the Nationaltheater in Munich.
Plot
Four young men from a moonless land steal the moon of a neighbouring country piece by piece and carry it home. When each of them dies, he takes a quarter of it into his grave; there the moon is reassembled, and its light rouses the dead to riotous revelry – until Saint Peter intervenes and hangs the moon back in its place in the sky.
Cultural significance
Orff himself called the work his "farewell to Romanticism." His staging concept calls for heaven, earth and the underworld to be visible at once, letting the opera shift between farce and mystery play, comedy and tragedy.