About the work
Palestrina is a “musical legend” in three acts by Hans Pfitzner to his own libretto, drawing on the legend that the composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina saved polyphonic church music in the sixteenth century. The premiere was conducted by Bruno Walter on 12 June 1917 at the Prinzregententheater in Munich, with Karl Erb in the title role.
Plot
Cardinal Borromeo pressures the ageing Palestrina, still mourning his late wife, to write a new mass for the Council of Trent to prove that polyphonic music can remain part of the liturgy. Palestrina initially refuses but then composes the mass in a single night after visions of deceased masters and his dead wife appear to him. In the third act the mass is performed to great success, the Pope honours Palestrina, and Borromeo asks his forgiveness.
Cultural significance
Freely embellishing the historical legend, Pfitzner regarded “Palestrina” as his life’s work and as a statement of late-Romantic, Wagner-schooled art against musical modernism; after 1945 the opera was temporarily tainted by Pfitzner’s closeness to National Socialism, but it has since regained its place among the demanding repertoire pieces of German opera houses.