In the summer of 2016 the Fondation Royaumont embarked on an unusual production of Alexander Zemlinsky’s opera A Florentine Tragedy, based on Oscar Wilde’s play of the same name, which Max von Schillings premiered on 30 January 1917 at the Hoftheater in Stuttgart. The Foundation invited the director Arthur Nauzyciel, assisted by Raphaël Haberberg, to preside over a two-week theatre and music workshop resulting in a public presentation. Four students of the EHESS in Paris, selected by the historian and musicologist Karine Le Bail (Centre de recherches sur les arts et le langage – CRAL, CNRS/EHESS), participated in the read-throughs and the rehearsals along with the singers and instrumentalists. This cooperative project, at once theatrical, musical, and academic, made it possible to refine the eminently complex dramaturgy of Zemlinsky’s opera, although its plot is quite simple in appearance. Research on the libretto, the music, and the various characters was furthered by an examination of the historical and artistic contexts of the premiere of A Florentine Tragedy in order to develop all its possible aesthetic implications.

The deliberately exploratory dimension of this in-depth work session at the Royaumont Abbey was a unique experience for all its participants, enabling each of them to discover the many dimensions necessary to stage an opera like this one, and to create special and long-lasting memories of the many-layered exchanges it facilitated.