The History of King Roger
Written by Kristin Rasmussen
In a letter to librettist Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz (1894-1980), Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937), the composer of King Roger (1926), stated about the work:
“I preferred to bury everything in darkness and night, to conceal the Shepherd and his surroundings in it – so that the spectator himself ought to figure out what it is about, or else if he is an idiot, he should leave the theater stupefied, which I wish for him from the bottom of my heart.”
With a lack of intense action and an ending with no definitive answer, King Roger can be seen as unapproachable and plotless to the unwelcoming eye. But this opera’s strength lies in its ambiguity. Approaching King Roger requires an open mind and a willingness to be changed by this story of the battle between Apollonian and Dionysian ideologies, the eternal human conflict between duty and desire.
Born in 1882, Szymanowski was raised on a wealthy family estate in the Kiev region of modern-day Ukraine, surrounded by Polish nobility and as a member of the Russian Empire and a citizen of a not-yet-existing Poland. The arts dominated his early years, and Szymanowski and his siblings all went on to become professional musicians and artists. In his teens and twenties, while attending the Music Institute of Warsaw, he co-founded the 'Young Poland' movement in music. This group, which was greatly influenced by Neo-romanticism, marked the beginning of Szymanowski's lifetime involvement with the development of a Polish national style. Travel consumed a significant portion of Szymanowski's life. He spent a significant portion of his early career in Germany and Austria, which laid the groundwork for his compositional style. Richard Wagner's music, in particular, held a significant appeal for Szymanowski, demonstrated by his extensive use of Wagnerian leitmotifs throughout King Roger, brief melodic themes that depict persons, places, objects, or concepts and can be adjusted while being readily identifiable.
Szymanowski's exploration of Italy and North Africa began in 1908, with subsequent travels in 1910, 1911, and 1914. The cultures of Ancient Greece, Norman Sicily, and the Arab world had a massive influence on his compositional style and inspirations over the coming years, culminating in King Roger. In 1917, the devastating repercussions of the Russian Revolution left Szymanowski unable to compose. Instead, he immersed himself in classical philosophy and culture, particularly the writings of Homer, Plato, and Euripides. Efebos (1918), a gigantic two-volume novel that addressed religious faith and homosexual passion, emerged from this deeply depressed period in his life; these topics, as well as its Sicilian setting, connect it deeply to King Roger.
The libretto of King Roger is loosely inspired by a scene from Euripides' tragedy The Bacchae. In The Bacchae, a disguised Dionysus has led the stubborn King Pentheus into the trap of a Bacchanalian feast. However, unlike Pentheus, who is driven insane and ultimately killed, the intoxication of the Dionysian cult leaves a profound emotional mark on Roger, who, despite following the disguised Dionysus to the bacchanalian festival, remains silent and alone at the end of the opera, abandoned by the cult and left with an imprint on his soul, watching the sun rise. The opera’s titular character, King Roger, is inspired by the real 12th-century Norman ruler of Sicily, King Roger the Second.
The opera takes place in a concise three acts and runs about 85 to 90 minutes total. The music unfolds continuously, and the whole plot takes place over the course of a single night, beginning in the Palermo Cathedral in the evening, continuing to the palace's courtyard at night, and concluding at dawn in a historic amphitheater. King Roger tells the story of a 12th-century Christian Sicilian king who witnesses his wife and entire court being swept up into the madness of the Dionysian mystery cult, culminating in a bacchanal dance. Throughout the opera, King Roger is confronted with the Nietzschean concepts of the Apollonian vs. Dionysian (duty vs. desire) and decide what is best for himself and his people. Roger spends the entire work balancing his obligation to his Christian faith and position as monarch with the intense passion and intoxication of the Dionysian cult. And as he witnesses his wife Roxana and the entire court give in to the allure of the disguised Dionysus, his decision becomes increasingly challenging. Act 3 concludes with Roger alone in the rising sun at the end of the opera, seemingly gazing into the future and unable to find a definitive answer to his intrapersonal conflict.
The genre of King Roger is difficult to pin down. It lacks a clear tragic or morally significant issue to anchor it and is dependent on the audience member's involvement and interpretation. Given its leitmotifs and orchestral involvement, it could be considered a Wagnerian music drama. Alternatively, due to the significance of the chorus, restricted stage motion, and the subject matter of the opera, King Roger could be viewed as closer to an oratorio, and each act becomes a tableaux, static and dramatic depictions of a scenario. It is both possible and regularly performed in concert rather than on stage. Though Szymanowski later described it as an opera—using this term as its official genre—both the composer and the librettist described the work as a "mysterium;" for them, King Roger was something that avoided categorization entirely.
During his travels in Sicily the melting of Greek and Christian cultural elements deeply impacted his creative forces, and this fusion became the foundation for King Roger, and under the Mediterranean’s spell, King Roger consumed Szymanowski from 1918 to 1924. He was obsessively engaged with it and viewed it's completion as essential to his career. The libretto was written in collaboration with Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Szymanowski's distant cousin. The two remained close friends throughout their lives and shared a passion for Sicilian culture. The collaboration was troublesome in certain aspects; Szymanowski was more engaged in the topic than Iwaszkiewicz, and both became fixated on Polish national styles in the early 1920s. Nevertheless, King Roger debuted at the Grand Theater in Warsaw on June 19, 1926.
As classical music critic Anthony Tommasini put it, King Roger is “mystical, sumptuous, and daring,” but even so, it remains an underperformed work in the opera repertory. Its presence has increased in the last few decades, King Roger is performed often throughout eastern Europe, particularly in Poland and the Czech Republic. Its arrival in the United States came in 1981 as a concert version performed by the St. Louis Symphony under the baton of American conductor Leonard Slatkin. Since the late 1990s and early 2000s, the opera has experienced a worldwide renaissance, with performances both staged and in concert across Western Europe, the United States, Australia, and even in Japan. The most recent US performance was its Chicago premiere in 2022 with the Chicago Opera Theatre.
This summer you can experience Szymanowski’s gorgeous and mysterious work at the Blank Performing Arts center. With baritone Alexander Birch Elliott as King Roger II, Soprano Lydia Katarina as Roxana, and tenor Christopher Sokolwski as the Shepherd in the company premiere of King Roger, almost 100 years to the day of its original premiere.