About the work
Der Zwerg (The Dwarf) is a one-act opera by Alexander von Zemlinsky, premiered in Cologne in 1922. The libretto by Georg Klaren is based on Oscar Wilde's fairy tale The Birthday of the Infanta. The work is regarded as Zemlinsky's most important and most personal opera.
Plot
For the eighteenth birthday of the Spanish Infanta Donna Clara, a man of short stature is brought to court as an exotic gift. The dwarf, who has never seen a mirror, knows nothing of his deformity and believes himself a handsome knight. The cruelly coquettish Infanta toys with his feelings and lets him believe she returns his love. When the dwarf finally beholds himself in a mirror and recognises his true form, he is shattered by the realisation and dies of a broken heart, while the Infanta carries on her party, bored.
Cultural significance
Der Zwerg bears strongly autobiographical traits: Zemlinsky, once spurned as ugly by Alma Mahler, identified with the tragic title figure. The late-Romantic, expressive score, schooled in Strauss and Mahler, is of painful beauty. Defamed as "degenerate" by the Nazis and long forgotten, the work has enjoyed a significant renaissance since the 1980s and is today regarded as a moving masterpiece about beauty, cruelty, and self-recognition.