Heliane is undoubtedly Korngold's operatic masterpiece and is the work for which he should be best known, despite the controversy surrounding its early years. Originally entitled Das dunkle Reich (The Dark Kingdom), it is based on an unpublished mystery play Die Heilige (The Saint) by the writer Hans Kaltneker, whose poetry Korngold had used for some song settings. Kaltneker died in 1919 at the age of twenty four before the two ever met, but oddly had apparently intended Die Heilige specifically to be set to music by Korngold, having seen a performance of Die tote Stadt. Ignorant of this fact till much later, Korngold immediately seized on the play and fell to scoring it with enthusiasm. Hans Müller's libretto incorporated the strong and controversial themes of the original play and called for on-stage nudity—impossible under the social mores of 1920s Vienna.

Korngold's father (Julius), in his pre-eminent position as one of Vienna's leading opera critics, tried to distance himself to a degree from his son's work in order to avoid accusations of favoritism. However, his scathing attacks on Ernst Krenek's opera Jonny spielt auf, which was approaching its première at roughly the same time as Heliane, stretched Vienna's credibility more than slightly in this regard. Julius truly believed Krenek to be a musical anti-Christ and a leading cause of the steady corruption of modern opera as he saw it. His attempts to prevent the opera being staged at the Vienna State Opera led to the bizarre situation in which a Jewish writer's artistic criticism was heavily supported by the German Nazi party! This controversy surrounded the Vienna première of Krenek's work in December 1927 and the Hamburg première of Heliane some two months earlier, reflecting badly on the latter. Korngold's opera was well received at the time, despite the bad odor surrounding the polarization of musical opinion which it unwittingly helped to engender, but disappeared from the repertoire shortly after Hitler became Chancellor.

The opera is scored for a huge orchestra, demanding no less than five keyboards, off-stage ensembles, multiply-divided strings and incredible vocal gymnastics from the singers. Much more radical than its predecessors, it achieves as much tonality as Korngold will ever permit in his music—a self-confessed tip of the hat in the direction of Schoenberg and his contemporaries. Essentially, however, it is based on closed forms and through composed in the Wagnerian tradition. Full of complex and ecstatic music, its is characterized by a brooding passion and mystical motifs throughout. The powerfully romantic love duet which closes the opera is among Korngold's most passionate and lyrical operatic music.



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