MUNICH — On a recent evening at the Bavarian State Opera here, there wasn’t an empty seat in the house. Even if one had opened up, there were people waiting outside in the December chill, eager to fill it.

It was one of those nights that felt like the event of the year — a fact remarkable if only because the work being performed was Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s “Die Tote Stadt” (“The Dead City”), which had once all but disappeared from the world’s stages.

Popularity is a fickle thing in any art form. The works of Bach were long considered outdated, until a 19th-century resurgence established him as perhaps the essential composer. Grand operas by Meyerbeer are now treated as curiosities, yet during his lifetime they were ubiquitous.

You can count Korngold (1897-1957) among the artists whose fame has ebbed and flowed over the past century — swept up in the tides of academic taste, the rise and fall of governments, and the willingness of opera companies to think beyond familiar classics.