astra von berlifitzing
Act I - 1809
Astra von Berlifitzing and Dion Metzengerstein, forbidden lovers, heirs of two feuding families from the mountains of the remote frontiers of the Austrian Empire, met by chance in a moonlit glade, and, against all warnings, fell instantly in love. They were discovered and banished from their houses; Dion, to Vienna where he became a world-renowned composer; Astra to Paris where her fury became her art of dance.
ACT II - 1825
The two lovers are fated to meet again. This evening Dion, now Baron Metzengerstein, is hosting an entertainment at his palatial ballroom, featuring his famous waltz-ballet compositions. Astra, now Countess Berlifitzing, arrives unannounced at the enemy palace to dance to her Dion’s music and claim the love taken from her so long ago.
Reunited through their art, and with, passions rekindled, Astra proves herself to be the only dancer able to match Dion’s music in heart and soul. While Dion thrives on challenging his muse and testing her limits, Astra is ecstatic when dancing to the music of the great Dion Metzengerstein. The fury of his Dion’s creation knows no boundaries until finally he drives Astra into a frenzied dance of abandonment. Spinning too close to the blazing hearth, flames catch her dress and though Astra continues her dance, the flames mercilessly engulf her. Overwhelmed by conflicting emotions, Dion sends Astra home, where she vanishes in a fire that destroys Castle Berlifitzing.
ACT III - 2025
Centuries have passed. Palace Metzengerstein is now a pleasure resort hotel. Its ballroom is a dancehall, a popular nightspot for the eccentric underworld. “Hotel Palace Metzengerstein” is full of intrigue and mystery; no one dares to speculate as to the true identity of the aged pianist “Dion” holding fast to his keyboard.
This evening’s dance contestants’ sensual world-dance styles never turn the head of the mysterious man on the keys until a new and mysterious dancer named Amalia enters like a forgotten curse. In two hundred years she is the first dancer to command the attention of the brooding, saturnine composer. He resolves to test her and plays the waltz that destroyed Astra. Dion plays and Amalia dances, both in utter absorption; but as she dances, a wildfire, erupting out of the accursed ruins of Castle Berlifitzing, suddenly conflagrates the Hotel Palace Metzengerstein. In their last moments, Amalia reveals herself both as Dion’s nemesis and doom, and as his one true love, lost, betrayed, yet faithful to the last. They dance into the inferno, where Astra von Berlifitzing and Dion von Metzengerstein will live, die, dance and burn happily ever after!
Poe and Astra
Astra's libretto is inspired by and based upon dark themes from Edgar Allan Poe's short stories "Metzengerstein" and "Ligeia."
Metzengerstein
This Poe story, from an earlier century than "Astra," introduces the hereditary rivalry of the families of Metzengerstein and Berlifitzing, and makes Berlifitzing "the less ancient and less wealthy" house.
Date of story: The Berlifitzings have a "Saracen ancestor," and the general location at that time as "the interior of Hungary" and"in a vast wilderness": given these facts, while the time of Poe's story cannot be fixed precisely, it must lie between the late 16th and the early 18th century.
Wealth: Poe's story says of the Baron Metzengerstein of that day "His castles were without number. The chief in point of splendor and extent was the 'Palace Metzengerstein.' The boundary line of his dominions was never clearly defined; but his principal park embraced a circuit of fifty miles."
Contiguity: Not only are their estates "contiguous," but the inhabitants of the Castle Berlifitzing might look, from their lofty buttresses, into the very windows of the Palace Metzengerstein," the inhabitants of the Palace Metzengerstein could hear the uproar when the Berlifitzing stables burned, and see "the glare of ruddy light thrown full by the flaming stables [of Berlifitzing] upon the windows of the [Baron Metzengerstein's] apartment."
Fire motif: at the beginning of the story, the then count Wilhelm von Berlifitzing dies in the fire that consumes his stables; at the end, the then Baron Frederick von Metzengerstein dies in the fire that engulfs his palace.
All these elements of Poe's "Metzengerstein" are preserved in "Astra."
Ligeia
While Poe's metempsychosis in "Metzengerstein" turns the dead Count Wilhelm von Berlifitzing into a horse, in "Ligeia" the narrator's dead first wife Ligeia seizes control of, and reanimates, the body of the second wife Rowena. Ligeia's return is the model for the return of Astra von Berlifitzing, who takes possession of her successor Amalia.
The epigraph to "Ligeia" is:
"And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will."
- Joseph Glanvill
Ligeia's appearance constantly brings Glanvill's lines to the mind of the narrator. "An intensity in thought, action, or speech, was possibly, in her, a result, or at least an index, of that gigantic volition which, during our long intercourse, failed to give other and more immediate evidence of its existence. Of all women whom I have ever known she, the outwardly calm, the ever-placid Ligeia, was the most violently a prey to the tumultuous vultures of stern passion. And of such passion I could form no estimate, save by the miraculous expansion of those eyes which at once so delighted and appalled me, by the almost magical melody, modulation, distinctness and placidity of her very low voice, and by the fierce energy (rendered doubly effective by contrast with her manner of utterance) of the words which she uttered." The intensity of Ligeia's will to live, and of her love for the anonymous narrator, are the implicit explanation for her return.. The Glanvill epigraph is quoted in part in "Astra von Berlifitzing," where it serves to underline the extreme intensity of will of both Dion and Astra, a force of will that maintains Dion in life and allows Astra to return to possess Amalia. Dion refuses to die (until his purpose is accomplished); Astra refuses to stay dead (until her purpose, and Dion's, are accomplished).
