Atonal Antarctic

On a bare stage beneath a jagged ice floe, a chorus of penguins sang a solemn farewell to the explorer, who had just lurched off into the Antarctic night. The audience was not sure what it was watching, but the composer had no doubts. Said Winfried Zillig: "It's pure opera."

German Atonalist Zillig wrote his opera The Sacrifice in 1937, but the work had only three performances until its present revival at West Germany's Kassel Opera House. Based on a play by the late expressionist writer Reinhard Goering,* Sacrifice tells the story of Robert Scott's last, tragic expedition to the South Pole in 1912. Its legendary hero is Lawrence Gates, who suffered frostbite and, realizing that he was jeopardizing the chances of the other members of the expedition, marched off into a blizzard in a suicidal sacrifice. In Zillig's treatment, the penguins enter the story as a kind of Greek chorus, representing hostile nature, and commenting with pitilessly unemotional detachment on the explorers' plight. Zillig's dissonant score proved to be as stark as the setting, with rare lyric interludes when Oates (Baritone Martin Schmidt) realizes what he must do.

The opera got a mixed reception but obviously held its audience. It also breathed new life into the career of Composer Zillig, 55, a pupil of Schoenberg's who was once regarded as one of Germany's major talents. Other West German stages have already signed to produce Sacrifice, and next season it may be presented in London, penguins and all.