About the work
Chamber opera in three acts by Hans Werner Henze to a libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, whom Henze had first met on Ischia in 1954 and who hosted him for several summers afterward at their home in Kirchstetten, Austria, while they worked on the piece together. The German-language premiere took place on 20 May 1961 at the Rokokotheater in Schwetzingen as part of the Schwetzingen Festival; the English original followed in July of the same year at Glyndebourne.
Plot
The aging, self-absorbed poet Mittenhofer works on a new piece at a mountain hotel, drawing inspiration from the visions of the elderly Hedwig Reischmann. When his young mistress Elisabeth falls in love with the mountain guide Toni, Mittenhofer appears to release the couple generously — but sends them on a climb despite an approaching storm, and both die in a blizzard. At the celebration for the premiere of his "Elegy for Young Lovers," Mittenhofer coldly turns their deaths into material for his art.
Cultural significance
The opera began Henze's collaboration with the poets Auden and Kallman, who had earlier written the libretto for Stravinsky's "The Rake's Progress"; their second work with Henze, "The Bassarids," followed in 1966. As an unsparing study of artistic self-absorption, the Elegy remains one of the most literarily ambitious librettos of postwar music theatre.