NATHANS TOD. Oper in 2 Akten nach G. E. Lessing
und dem gleichnamigen Theaterstück von G. Tabori

In Georg Tabori’s version of the story of Nathan, written 200 years after Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s hopeful hymn to tolerance, no more remains than a gloomy paraphrase about intolerance. With a rich monologue in which he tells of the parable of the burning palace, Nathan (called “The Wise” by the people) turns to the audience. Sultan Saladin is defeated at chess by his sister. Now Saladin not only has to pay his chess-playing debts, but he suffers from a notorious lack of money in general besides this. Treasurer Al-Hafi is asked to provide help – he is requested to lead his old friend, the Jew Nathan, from whom Saladin would like to borrow money, into the palace. Nathan appears before Saladin and Sittah, and during the course of the negotiations Nathan asks to be allowed to tell a story, namely the Ring Parable. This wish is immediately denied him – the parable has become a too-often repeated story and no one wants to hear it. In a conversation with patriarchs, the young templar takes great trouble to announce that there is a Jew there who has brought up a girl who was baptized as a Christian. This Jew, none other than Nathan, has not only withheld the Christian faith from the girl; he has not raised her in any faith at all, out of unpardonable impartiality. The patriarch sentences Nathan to death. Nathan’s house is in flames; he removes the corpses of his children and covers their faces with autumn leaves. Nathan finally tells the Ring Parable; the story’s profession of tolerance before the background of the gruesome events appears, in a grotesque way, to have turned into its opposite. Nathan dies and the society surrounding Sultan Saladin celebrates its victory. Only Sittah recognises and feels the dismaying extent of Nathan’s fate and commits suicide.

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