To compose the final scene of an opera before a word of the libretto has been written—indeed, before there is even really a plot—is one of the oddest things a composer could do. But this is precisely what Schoeck did in May 1919. He had set off for the Ticino once more, this time with Rüeger and their mutual friend Paul Loewensberg, his intention being presumably to relax after the turmoil of the Ranudo premiere. But just as had been the case with Erwin, the experience of seeing a new opera take to the stage had fired Schoeck anew with enthusiasm for the theater.

According to a postcard home, Schoeck and his friends first spent a few days in Lugano with Hesse and Andreae before moving on to Brissago, where he felt so at ease that he did not even return for the next performances of Ranudo in Zurich. He was not alone in his delight in the region. The nearby Monte Verità had in the previous twenty years become a place where vegetarians, socialists, Communists, anarchists, pacifists, theosophists, spiritualists, nudists, and adherents of the freest kinds of love could and did give equally free expression to their assorted inclinations. This was a world away from Zurich, and it was to find freedom from that city's everyday Germanic grind that Schoeck, too, had kept coming here. It had also been for him a place of sexual adventure, so in his current unattached state he might have hoped that his escapades of yore might now repeat themselves.