Talentdämmerung

The complete works of Otto Büchstein Go Premium O! Great Yawning Chasm To The New World (von Sachsen-Rampton, 1886) Index: Click ᐅ to expand: Otto Büchstein Fictional heroes Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Requests? Insults? We’d love to 📧 hear from you. Sign up for our newsletter.

Der Kampf um Talente, sometimes performed in Italian as La Lotta Per Attrarre Talenti (“The Struggle To Attract Talent”), is an unfinished operetta by winsome Austrian librettist and amateur composer Otto Büchstein. Never performed in his lifetime, or for that matter since, a fully-formed script was recovered from his belongings in the opium den in Mandalay where he spent his last, fevered months.

There is some controversy about its provenance: some point to the self-interested work of Büchstein’s life-long antagonist Sir Jerrold Baxter-Morley, K.C., anxious to boost his consultancy fees.

Most famous rousing aria, accompanied by the string section playing specially-designed tiny violins, comes when Prepostero, a senior managing partner of Magic Circle form Slaughter Cowards Later, stands upon a white cliff overlooking jagged rocks of the tempestuous ocean between Albion and the New World, wails into the chasm:

Oh, Fato, con le tue sfortunate oscillazioni ed errori di valuta scandalosa
Mi hai gettato nell’abisso della disperazione!
Non sono amato! Sono desolato!
Come posso cambiare le mie bollette senza valore
Per servizi giuridici di alto livello nel nuovo mondo?
Oh, fato, mi schiacci!
La guerra per il talento era già dura
Ma tu pesista nel renderlo più difficile!
Questo si aggiunge a quello che era già un ambiente difficile.
Dei, schioccati le guance!
Segna le mie parole! Ascolta quello che ho da dire!
Questo sarà un catalizzatore per più movimenti laterali