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Rescued By Robin Hood

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At the beginning of 1938, the main concern of Erick Wolfgang Korngold was the upcoming production of his opera Die Kathrin. Within a few months the Austrian composer would find his world — and his priorities — turned upside down, and he would owe his life to an unlikely rescuer — Robin Hood.

Korngold was attending a performance of his third piano sonata by a gifted student named Robert Kohner when his wife broke the news that Korngold had been offered a conract to write the music for the Errol Flynn movie, The Adventures of Robin Hood. The astounded composer looked at his wife and said, “This is an omen.” But the offer from Warner Brothers required him to be in Hollywood within a few days, and Korngold was reluctant to leave with the debut of his opera hanging in the balance. He called the Director of the Vienna Staatsoper for advice, and was surprised to hear his own words coming back to him: “Take this as an omen and go!”

After a dangerous drive over icy roads, a stormy trans-Atlantic crossing, and a train accident, Kornhold and his wife and son arrived in Hollywood just twelve days after leaving Vienna. The composer had been sketching out ideas for the movie during the trip, but when he saw the fast-paced adventure film, he balked, convinced that he would be unable to write music for it. Within days, his bridges were burned behind him, though, as Hitler’s troops marched intro Austria. As the work of a non-Aryan, Korngold’s opera was no longer eligible for production, and his house in Vienna was occupied by German troops.

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The young pianist who had played Korngold’s sonata was one of the first to die in the concentration camps, and Erich Korngold had no doubt that were it not for Robin Hood, he and his family would have suffered the same fate. He returned the favor by writing music that won the film an Oscar.