ABSTRACT
This chapter presents both Mendelssohn's Antigone and to a far lesser extent Oedipus in Kolonos deserves much of the credit for the nineteenth-century German revival of Greek tragedy, which in turn contributed to a larger European one. Mendelssohn's Antigone not only contributed to the success of those productions staged in Germany in the 1840s but also served as an important symbol of the reconciliation between the pagan past and the Christian present. While the 1845 court production of Oedipus and the public performances in Berlin thereafter failed to achieve anything even approaching the impact of Antigone, the few critics who commented on events nonetheless agreed on the success of Mendelssohn's music. Also like his earlier music for Greek tragedy, the work makes frequent use of both unison choral recitative and of melodrama. According to Mendelssohn, the music that he composed for Antigone was determined by what he described as the 'mood' unique to each of Sophocles' choral odes.
