ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses primarily on the operas and music for the concert hall that the Austrian composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957) wrote before he moved, in the 1930s, to Hollywood. But it deals as well with the dilemma that Korngold faced during what, in effect, was his Hollywood exile. So that he could support his family and other refugees, Korngold easily enough composed scores for such successful films as Captain Blood, Anthony Adverse, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, and The Sea Hawk; at the same time, he felt unable to write major concert works as long as Hitler remained in power. In 1947, shortly after the premiere of his intensely romantic Violin Concerto, and just as he was preparing for his return to Europe, Korngold suffered a serious heart attack. Yet he continued to compose, and a number of his later pieces – including a symphony, a string quartet, and the Symphonic Serenade for String Orchestra – are starting to find a place in the repertory alongside his early works.
