About the work
Der Trank der Unsterblichkeit (The Draught of Immortality) is a Romantic opera in four acts, composed by E. T. A. Hoffmann in 1808 to a libretto by Julius von Soden. The story combines Frances Sheridan's tale The History of Nourjahad (1767) with motifs from August Gottlieb Meissner's Alexander und der Quell der Unsterblichkeit (1796). In 1807 Hoffmann sent the finished score to Bamberg as a work sample for a Kapellmeister post; when Soden moved on to the Würzburg theatre, no performance materialised there, and the manuscript lay in the Berlin State Library for almost two centuries. Its stage premiere did not take place until 28 April 2012, at Theater Erfurt, conducted by Samuel Bächli and directed by Peter P. Pachl.
Plot
The wealthy nobleman Naramand turns down a high position at the Persian court because he longs for immortality. A hermit and an assembly of priests warn him that only virtue is immortal, yet a shah grants him a magic potion all the same. When Naramand dreams of those he loves aging and dying around him while he alone stays young, he recognises the futility of his wish and is reunited with his wife.
Cultural significance
Musically, Hoffmann's score — a sequence of an overture and eighteen numbers — is audibly modelled on Mozart's The Magic Flute. The work stands as evidence of Hoffmann's ambitions as a composer, long overshadowed by his literary fame: only in 1997 did the musicology department at Detmold prepare performing material, allowing the opera to reach the stage 204 years after it was written.