Towards the end of Henrik Ibsen’s 1867 drama Peer Gynt, the aged title hero is confronted by ‘A Sighing in the Air’, the gathering of his songs unsung; buried in his heart for too long, they now threaten to undo him. Yet during his adventurous life, Peer Gynt had not stifled all songs. Just one act previously, in the Moroccan desert, he had devoted two ditties to the alluring Bedouin girl Anitra: one in the classical pose of a nocturnal lover with lute, the other to prove his youthfulness and virility with a doting little dance. The fact, however, that he intoned both songs in the garb of an Arab prophet indicated that they did not express his real self, and therefore could not exculpate him in the end. By contrast, Peer Gynt dons no such guise in Werner Egk’s eponymous operatic adaptation of Ibsen, premiered by the Berlin State Opera in November 1938. Instead, I will argue, Egk endowed his hero with multiple musical allusions – ones that complicate this already equivocal character as well as potential political readings of the opera as a whole. While Ibsen’s first stage song fulfils a traditional operatic topos, Egk adopted only the first stanza of the second one, and almost verbatim. This might seem surprising, not just because Egk elsewhere bolstered monologues by condensing texts from across the play in his libretto, but also because of the crude lines themselves:

中文翻译：

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危及瓦格纳主义？Egk，“ DeinHähnchenbin ich”（Peer Gynt），Peer Gynt（1938年），第二幕

易卜生1867年的戏剧《佩尔·金特》（Peer Gynt）快要结束时，这位年迈的头衔英雄面对着“空中叹息”，他的歌声不见踪影。埋葬在他心中的时间过长，现在威胁要解救他。然而，在冒险生活中，Peer Gynt并未扼杀所有歌曲。此前，在摩洛哥沙漠中，他的一举一动是为了吸引诱人的贝都因女郎阿尼特拉（Anitra）：一个以琵琶的夜行情人的古典姿势，另一举动是通过点点点滴的小舞来证明他的青春与活力。然而，事实是，他在阿拉伯先知的服装中给这两首歌都加了音，这表明它们没有表达出他的真实自我，因此最终无法使他宽容。相比之下，Peer Gynt在Werner Egk同名易卜生的歌剧改编作品中没有这样的伪装，1938年11月由柏林国家歌剧院首演。相反，我要说的是，埃格赋予他的英雄多种音乐寓言–使这个本来就模棱两可的角色以及整个歌剧的潜在政治解读变得复杂。易卜生的第一首歌充满了传统的歌剧主题，而埃格克只采用了第二首歌的第一节，几乎是逐字逐句。这似乎令人惊讶，这不仅是因为其他地方的Egk通过在他的歌词中浓缩戏剧中的文本来加强独白，而且还因为粗俗的文字本身：Egk仅采用了第二个的第一个节，并且几乎逐字记录。这似乎令人惊讶，这不仅是因为其他地方的Egk通过在他的歌词中浓缩戏剧中的文本来加强独白，而且还因为粗俗的文字本身：Egk仅采用了第二个的第一个节，并且几乎逐字记录。这似乎令人惊讶，这不仅是因为其他地方的Egk通过在他的歌词中浓缩戏剧中的文本来加强独白，而且还因为粗俗的文字本身：