Literary Reference
In his 'Doktor Faustus', Thomas Mann refers to the first performance of Adrian Leverkühn's work Apocalypse as being under Otto Klemperer in 1926 at Frankfurt. The narrator role 'is here written for a tenor..., one of castrato-like high register, whose chilly crow, objective, reporter-like, stands in terrifying contrast to the content of his catastrophic announcements.... This extremely difficult part was taken and sung by a tenor with the voice of a eunuch, named Erbe ('von einem Tenoristen eunuchalen Typs names Erbe gesungen')... the singer had with the greatest intelligence grasped the idea.' (Ch XXXIV, conclusion). The famous Mann irony applies here to the slight change of the name Erb, which has here become the German word for "heritage" - Erbe.
Read more about this topic: Karl Erb
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