''The Horatians and the Curiatians'' (Die Horatier und die Kuriatier) is a '' Lehrstück'' ("''Schulstück''" in the collected plays) by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht written in collaboration with

Margarete Steffin Margarete Emilie Charlotte Steffin (21 March 1908 – 4 June 1941) was a German actress and writer, one of Bertold Brecht's closest collaborators, as well as a prolific translator from Russian and Scandinavian languages. Biography Born to a pr ...

in 1933–34. It is a retelling of the story of the Horatii and Curiaces, a subject treated by

Corneille Pierre Corneille (; 6 June 1606 – 1 October 1684) was a French tragedian. He is generally considered one of the three great seventeenth-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine. As a young man, he earned the valuable patronag ...

('' Horace'') and subsequently by many

opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libr ...

composers (see Horatii). Commissioned by the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army ( Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, afte ...

, the play was printed in Moscow in 1936 but never performed until 1958, two years after Brecht's death. The two choruses are the main characters. Brecht had initially planned the work as a collaboration with composer

Hanns Eisler Hanns Eisler (6 July 1898 – 6 September 1962) was an Austrian composer (his father was Austrian, and Eisler fought in a Hungarian regiment in World War I). He is best known for composing the national anthem of East Germany, for his long artisti ...

, but the two broke off their collaboration midway through the project. Two letters (from August 29, 1935 and shortly thereafter) to

document Brecht's frustration over the attempted long distance collaboration with the composer, also in exile. Thus, the work was initially published without a musical score. In 1954, Brecht invited composer Kurt Schwaen to set the play to music.

References

Plays by Bertolt Brecht Lehrstücke by Bertolt Brecht {{1930s-play-stub