Amleth und Fengo

Prince Amleth of Jutland fears that his uncle Fengo who has already killed his father and married his mother Geruthe will also kill him as soon as Amleth claims his right to the throne. For this reason, he pretends to be demented and lives in the kitchen. Fengo is mistrustful and sends Amleth to England accompanied by two attendants. His companions are to deliver the news to the English king that Amleth should be murdered by him. Amleth however succeeds in forging the rune tablet with the message and it is the attendants who are killed in his place. Sometime later, Amleth appears unexpectedly at a feast held by Geruthe and Fengo. The latter anticipates problems, orders Amleth’s sword to be rendered unusable and retires. Amleth makes the guests drunk and sets the hall on fire with the result that all perish in the flames – including his mother. He then enters Fengo’s chamber, exchanges his unusable sword with Fengo’s sword and kills him in an unequal duel. The population finds Amleth’s deeds good and accepts him as their new ruler.
In 1185, the Danish monk Saxo Grammaticus began to write the ‘Gesta Danorum’, a sixteen-volume history of Denmark, containing numerous tales and myths passed down through Danish folklore, including the story of Amleth und Fengo which also provided Shakespeare with the material for his version of the tale in his tragedy ‘Hamlet’. Ingomar Grünauer goes back to the original version in Latin for his opera which displays laconic brevity in comparison to Shakespeare’s masterpiece and also abstains from any type of philosophical superstructure. The fact of the murder of Horvendil at the hand of Fengo is never questioned and is known to everyone, thereby needing no ghost to motivate Amleth into taking action. His own deeds are undertaken in a struggle to attain power and are ultimately rewarded by success and ascension of the throne. Grünauer underlines the rapid pace of the story with an avant-garde music dominated by percussion, effectively underpinning the salient lines of the plot and characterised by aleatoric and free-tonal elements.