Venus d’Othmar Schoeck Un avatar lyrique de La Vénus d’Ille

Adapted from Mérimée’s La Vénus d’Ille, the opera Venus (1922) by Othmar Schoeck also borrows from Eichendorff’s novel La Statue de marbre (1819). Like other German lyrical works from the first half of the twentieth century, its treatment of the fantastic is a means to explore the hero’s psyche. The work shows us the anguish of the male subject who is bound to the affirmation of his virile supremacy even in the act of artistic creation.