About the work
Irrelohe is an opera in three acts by Franz Schreker to his own libretto, which he wrote within a few days in 1919; the music followed between 1920 and 1922. Otto Klemperer conducted the premiere on 27 March 1924 at the Stadttheater Köln.
Plot
A curse lies on the Counts of Irrelohe: in every generation, around his thirtieth year, a count violently assaults a woman from the village. Peter, the illegitimate son of a former count, and his half-brother, the ruling Count Heinrich, both desire the forester's daughter Eva; when the curse awakens in Peter, Heinrich kills him in the struggle over her. The fiddler Christobald avenges his own mother, once violated by a count, by setting Irrelohe Castle ablaze, while Heinrich is freed from the family's guilt through Eva's love.
Cultural significance
Musically, Irrelohe still belongs fully to Schreker's late-Romantic, harmonically oscillating idiom and is considered one of his most dense artist-dramas of instinct and guilt. Despite productions in several cities, the work could not hold a lasting place in the repertoire against shifting audience tastes and its increasingly complex score.