In the early years of the twentieth century Renaissance drama was exceedingly popular in Europe, especially in Germany, where it had inspired several plays and operas, including at least one by Korngold's teacher Alexander Zemlinsky. Searching for a second opera to be performed alongside his brief one-act opera buffa Der Ring des Polykrates, Korngold found a fascinating story of tragic Venetian love and infatuation from librettist Hans Müller. This he turned into Violanta, the most significant work of his early period and his best-known and best-loved opera. With this work he leaped from teenage works (which were far from immature in anybody's reckoning) to full-blooded maturity in a single bound.

It is certainly his most ambitious work to the point. It is scored for an immense orchestra and double chorus, and features an incredibly difficult tessitura role for the soprano. The setting of the piece in sixteenth century Venice gives Korngold full rein to produce some of his wittiest and most colorful music—presaging, to a degree, the ease he will have in finding inspiration for some of the scores he will write for historical movies in the United States later in life. For the first time in his oeuvre we find him using the Wagnerian technique of Leitmotiv in which a tune or melodic fragment is associated with each character.

Violanta was premièred in 1916 to a storm of laudatory reviews. Composer and critic Egon Wellesz summed up many people's thoughts by writing "...the powerful sensuality fascinates with its magical orchestral sounds", and Richard Strauss referred to Korngold's genius at achieving so much so young. The sheer sensual power and heightened emotional awareness of the scoring speaks volumes about the seventeen year old composer's state of mind at this time, but they provide a fertile wellspring of inspiration for some of his most accomplished dramatic music. Highlights in the seventy plus minutes of music include Violanta's hairdressing scene, Alfonso's serenade and aria and the magical duet Reine Liebe. Listening to Violanta today it is easy to see why Bruno Walter, who did so much to bring Korngold's music to the fore, referred to the opera (having heard the composer play the score through on the piano) as "...the eruption of a musico-dramatic volcano."



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