Catulli Carmina

After the success of Carmina Burana in 1937, theatres asked Orff for a companion piece to fill an evening. He went back to choruses on Catullus written some years earlier and largely forgotten, expanded and dramatised them, added solo roles, and framed the whole with a prologue and epilogue whose Latin text he devised himself with Eduard Stemplinger. Twelve poems supply the plot: the affair of Catullus and Lesbia, watched and mocked by nine old men who use it to instruct the young. The scoring is four pianos, percussion and voices.