Krapp, ou, La dernière bande Krapp intones "Sprechgesang" in the present; a lyrical vocal line caresses the pre-recorded monologues of his younger self. The melody for the section of tape which Krapp rewinds and re-listens to numerous times (his happiest moment, curled up with his lover in a gently rocking boat) is ingeniously captured as an "idée fixe" by Mihalovici." Krapp, ou, La dernière bande Krapp, ou, La dernière bande (English: "The Last Tape", German: "Krapp, oder Das letzte Band") is a chamber opera in one act by Marcel Mihalovici with a libretto by Samuel Beckett. The libretto is based on Beckett's 1958 play "Krapp's
Krapp's Last Tape gratification of those very bodily appetites that, earlier, he had resolved should be out of his life. Eating bananas and drinking have become a [daily routine]. Of the physical activities that he once considered excesses only sex has come to play a reduced part in his lonely existence" in the form of periodic visits from an old prostitute. Although this is a play about memory, the sixty-nine-year-old Krapp himself remembers very little. Virtually all the recollections come from the tape. As evidenced most clearly in the novel "Murphy", Beckett had a decent understanding of a variety of mental illnesses including