“Thou shalt not take lightly the great name of Death”.  So, sung to a weird version of the tune of Ein Feste Burg, ends the closing chorale of Viktor Ullmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis.  To the best of my knowledge there has never been a commercial video release of this work but it was filmed as a BBC/WDR co-production in 1977 and broadcast in both Britain and Germany.  I just got my hands on a copy of the BBC broadcast and thought it was well worth writing about.

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