Hindemith composed three one-act operas before attempting Cardillac, his first full-length effort. Some have claimed it as his greatest opera, superior to Mathis der Maler; certainly, it stands with the finest German operas of its time, including Berg's Wozzeck, Weill's Dreigroschenoper, and Krenek's Jonny spielt auf. The public did not take to it, however, and the composer himself apparently had doubts about the work and did a thorough revision in 1952.

The libretto of Cardillac was written by Ferdinand Lion, based on E.T.A. Hoffmann's Das Fräulein von Scuderi (The Girl From Scutari). When he fashioned the revised version, Hindemith himself made changes to the libretto. The story is set in seventeenth-century Paris, where a murderer is on the loose. Cardillac is a goldsmith recognized for his amazing talent at his craft. His daughter is torn between her love for an officer and for her father. It is revealed that the victims of the murderer all have one thing in common: they have purchased items from Cardillac.

The people are unaware that the murderer is in fact Cardillac himself, who explains, "What I create is mine." The officer purchases a gold chain from Cardillac, who then stabs him. This time the victim survives, but identifies Cardillac's assistant as the attacker. In the end, Cardillac, haunted by guilt, confesses to his deeds and is killed by a mob.

When Hindemith fashioned the revised version he expanded the three acts to four and made significant changes in the story, replacing Cardillac's daughter with an opera singer and the officer with Cardillac's journeyman. The general consensus is that the original version features a stronger story line and superior music, and on the few occasions when this opera is performed, it is usually in the earlier version.

The work is scored for a chamber-sized orchestra, and Hindemith crafts a precise overall structure. For example, the opera opens and closes with choral numbers, and the second act maintains a similar balance in starting and ending with an aria by Cardillac. Hindemith's themes throughout are generally short-breathed, and his music diatonic. He makes fairly strong use of ostinatos and is successful at imparting tension in a musical but not necessarily dramatic sense; themes are often developed in the spirit of a concertante work, but dramatic high points in the story often seem overlooked. Yet in the end the drama does not suffer; while local points may be ignored, the dramatic focus is merely trained upon the whole. One noteworthy musical and dramatic high point in the opera is the passacaglia in the last act.

The overriding theme of Cardillac is, in effect, the same one Hindemith would explore in Mathis der Maler and Die Harmonie der Welt—that of the relationship of the artist to his society.



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