Die Toteninsel

The Story of "Reconstruction" of a Lost Work

I discovered the libretto of Karl Georg Zwerenz (1874-1933) at an antiquary in Budapest. The libretto, published in 1919, tells the story of Arnold Böcklin's (1827 - 1901) painting of the same title, Die Toteninsel [1]. Hungarian composer Jenő Zádor composed an opera on the libretto, which had its first and only performance at the Hungarian Royal Opera House in 1928. The opera score disappeared after the premiere.

[1] The libretto's original title is Die Insel der Toten. Wien, Universal Edition, 1919. I use the title of Böcklin's painting, Die Toteninsel.

The lost music and libretto woke my interest. Some years ago, I thoroughly studied the painting, Die Toteninsel. Many legends emerged around the painting. According to one interpretation, the Pontikonisi Island served as the model for the island on the painting, which native people believed was the petrified ship of Odysseus. Based on other opinions, the St. Georg Island in the Cattaro Bay of Montenegro could have been Böcklin's inspiration.

Marie Berna, an American widow, ordered the painting from Böcklin as a tribute to her German diplomat husband after his unexpected death. This romantic composition gained such fame that Böcklin painted five copies of it between the years of 1880 and 1886. Die Toteninsel was a favorite of Freud, Lenin, Dali, and Hitler. Hitler even purchased one of the duplicates and hung it on the wall of the shelter where he committed suicide.

The plot of the German libretto, a love triangle drama, was common to 19th-century audience taste. The misunderstanding of human feelings leads the drama uncontrollably to a tragic ending. Interestingly, the work evolved only a year after the end of World War I and in the middle of bloody revolutions sweeping through Europe. These events founded the upcoming decades and led to an even greater catastrophe.

It is a question whether this work was meant to protest against these times disregarding past years' tragedies and disdaining the spirit of the era that sent millions to death. If my hypothesis is correct, this work is a Dadaist criticism of that time foreshadowing the image of an incomparable mental hospital that inherits the weighty neurosis of one’s loss of freedom. However, I may be wrong, and Zwerenz could have been literal about his libretto.

For me, the central figure of the work is Phyllis, the daughter of Simeon, instead of Böcklin. She is the only serious character who comes to realize her tragic life situation during the story from which she is unable to escape. She lives at the beach in a small fishing village. She watches the birds, sky, sea, and sailboats by the seashore every day. Pieter Bruegel the Elder's painting, Two Monkeys, comes to my mind. The title is misleading. Two fettered monkeys sit in a window eating walnuts. The sea, birds, and sailboats also appear in this painting behind the animals’ backs...all symbols of freedom. The main focus is not on the monkeys; they seldom cause themselves to be chained. The painting rather describes humanity that enslaves not only the animals but also its own kind with pleasure. Man has enormous ability to imprison the world while disregarding himself. Thus, the real title of the painting is Mankind (typical Brueghelian humor).



Phyllis meditates on the images of freedom every day. The sea, the waves, the clouds, the sky, the birds, the sailboat, the light...all, all of these are symbols of freedom. Böcklin symbolizes this attribute in the play. At the other end, the life of fishermen is as being prisoners of the sea, which ties them to its shores for centuries. They are unable to free themselves from these ties. Phyllis notices how differently Böcklin looks at the view and adopts it to herself. Moreover, this knowledge infects her. The infection of freedom spreads in her veins all the way to her heart. The simple Timaios who is in love with Phyllis misunderstands her intentions and thinks she fell in love with Böcklin. But instead, Phyllis fell in love with freedom. This is the reason her character is so tragic.

Böcklin, the artist, is the key to the understanding of freedom. Simeon despises Böcklin, the representative of freedom. As a consequence of Simeon’s contempt, Phyllis’ fate is to die. Although her death is not inevitable, it results in the restitution of the order of the world. Humanity bears freedom merely as a potential opportunity. In reality, independence is dysfunctional and dangerous for the society.

Die Toteninsel, even without its missing music score, operates on multiple levels. I was interested in the idea of a musical “reconstruction” to be sung in the original language. Our prior collaborative compositions, Mondrian Variations [2012] and Gilgamesh [2014], are instrumental electroacoustic compositions. Die Toteninsel is our first work including voice. Not speaking German was a challenge for me, but my lack of knowing the language was the final motivating force pushing me toward this project.


Following the musical taste of the original piece’s era, we slowly came to a point where everything received a new meaning and value in the light of today. The interpretation of the libretto’s text reflects the depreciation of our times: misunderstandings, mishearings, accents, language distortions, etc. Thus, this work does not belong to Dadaist traditions anymore; it rather applies to the reality of our modern everyday life. Dada entered everyday life.


I was looking for collaborators for our project who were not German speakers and whose life was strongly related to arts.

These people are:

J.K. Ihalainen, poet (Simeon)
Juha Valkeapää, actor and sound artist (Rufus)
Nea Lindgrén, visual artist (Phyllis)
Mikael Jurmu, musician (Timaeos)
Pia Karaspuro, dancer
Nouk Vály, musician
and myself (Böcklin)

The piece was based on improvisation and was not rehearsed before recording sections. Éva currently lives in the United States, and we communicated via email and webcam across the ocean. I reacted to her piano improvisations with my own improvisations. We never knew how the pieces will end at their initial phases. The singers, separate from one another, also improvised their parts to these open works. They did not meet once during recording sessions. In other words, they could not know what the previous or the following singer would record before or after. This working process characterised the duets as well, where the protagonists shaped their own melody lines in different rhythm and interpretation. In the duet of Timaeos and Phyllis (Jurmu and Lindgrén), the singers’ tempos and artistic approaches reveal a drastic contrast which demonstrates this method exceptionally well. Thanks to this diversity, the characters’ nature and temper become much more apparent. These situations determine the overall compositional development and conclusion.



About the language.

The text may have caused confusion in many ways. I never introduced the libretto’s instructions to the singers during recording sessions. This way, they never knew if they had to deliver their parts softly, incensedly, sensually, frightened, or perhaps lovingly whispered. They often raised their voice where they would have had to be tender or the other way around; they suppressed their discomposure in whispering.


German language pronunciation was problematic as well. I utilized google translation. After hearing a female voice pronuncing the sentences, I wrote down and phoneticized what I heard. Mikael Jurmu used a similar technique. Phoneticizing led to a surprising revelation. After the first hearing, Mikael taking notes in Finnish and me in Hungarian, our verbalizing the text sounded dissimilar depending on our own distinct grammar rules. Juha Valkeapää had not seen the text at all before the recording. What one hears on the CD is his first reading of this role.

In summary, the listener hears a musical improvisation in German with the singers interpreting a lost large scale composition about freedom without any instruction and without the deep knowledge of the language. I think we completed our goal.