The Fermata

A wistful reverie on youth, music, and first love, this tender tale gazes into an old painting and finds there two Italian singers and the green summer that changed a young man forever.

Gathered into The Serapion Brethren, The Fermata (Die Fermate) sees the composer Theodor, prompted by a picture of two singing sisters, recall his infatuated apprenticeship among travelling performers. Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (1776 – 1822), the German Romantic jurist, composer, and critic, pours his own love of the operatic voice into a bittersweet story of longing, comedy, and the passing of youth.