Death stalks the land: Joyce DiDonato in Schubert’s Winterreise

Death stalks the land: Joyce DiDonato in Schubert’s Winterreise

How much suffering can the human soul endure? When does increasing unhappiness turn into utter despair and the desire to employ the ultimate weapon of self-destruction? The Romantic era in the early 19th century throws up case after case of poets, composers and other artists who stood on the abyss and saw only blackness beyond. The texts of Wilhelm Müller, on which Schubert drew for inspiration in his song cycle Winterreise, have to do with alie…