The Ghost Sonata

The Ghost Sonata (Swedish: Spöksonaten ) is a chamber play of Johan August Strindberg. The premiere took place on 21 January 1908 intima teatern held that Strindberg had previously established in the year together with the actor August Falck. The premiere fell through, and the piece was only four years after the author's death through the spectacular Berlin production by Max Reinhardt in 1916 to success.

The action takes place in an old house, in which a food company einfindet who are trapped for many years as ghosts in their made-up stories, they need to maintain their facade to the outside. Main characters are the master of the house, pretending to be a noble colonel, his wife, who walks around in his own lifetime as a walking mummy, her daughter, who is the daughter of director Hummel, the old man in reality, and a poor student who in himself the daughter in love. In the course of the play some of the characters die. The student remains in the end back disillusioned.

Strindberg was an admirer of Beethoven and handed over the sonata form of chamber music to the drama. He added his " literary Sonata " to even an opus number. Strindberg: " We wanted to call after Beethoven's Ghost Sonata and the ghosts trio, so do not spook sonata. "

Musical settings

The Berlin composer Aribert Reimann chose The Ghost Sonata as the basis for an opera of the same name, which premiered in Berlin in 1984.