Joy H. Calico
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520254824
- eISBN:
- 9780520942813
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520254824.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This book looks at the German playwright's lifelong ambivalent engagement with opera. An ardent opera lover in his youth, Brecht later denounced the genre as decadent and irrelevant to modern society ...
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This book looks at the German playwright's lifelong ambivalent engagement with opera. An ardent opera lover in his youth, Brecht later denounced the genre as decadent and irrelevant to modern society even as he continued to work on opera projects throughout his career. He completed three operas and attempted two dozen more with composers such as Kurt Weill, Paul Hindemith, Hanns Eisler, and Paul Dessau. Brecht's simultaneous work on opera and Lehrstück in the 1920s generated the new concept of audience experience that would come to define epic theater, and his revisions to the theory of Gestus in the mid-1930s are reminiscent of nineteenth-century opera performance practices of mimesis.Less
This book looks at the German playwright's lifelong ambivalent engagement with opera. An ardent opera lover in his youth, Brecht later denounced the genre as decadent and irrelevant to modern society even as he continued to work on opera projects throughout his career. He completed three operas and attempted two dozen more with composers such as Kurt Weill, Paul Hindemith, Hanns Eisler, and Paul Dessau. Brecht's simultaneous work on opera and Lehrstück in the 1920s generated the new concept of audience experience that would come to define epic theater, and his revisions to the theory of Gestus in the mid-1930s are reminiscent of nineteenth-century opera performance practices of mimesis.
Joy H. Calico
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780520281868
- eISBN:
- 9780520957701
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520281868.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
A Survivor officially breached the iron curtain on April 15, 1958, when Herbert Kegel and the Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra performed the work in concert. The performance is situated within the ...
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A Survivor officially breached the iron curtain on April 15, 1958, when Herbert Kegel and the Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra performed the work in concert. The performance is situated within the context of state expectations for radio; concerns about fending off the American cultural invasion, as well as its nuclear threat; the contested role of dodecaphony—and Schoenberg in particular—in East German cultural politics; the relationship of the East German state to its Jewish citizens; and the bureaucratic process by which A Survivor was approved for performance and recording. Despite being performed in its entirety and in its original version, discourse about the work was subject to de-Semitization by the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) so that it could serve an antifascist agenda. The historical event of the Warsaw ghetto uprising was appropriated similarly across the Soviet bloc. The chapter explores Kegel's connection to Paul Dessau, as well as the role of Werner Sander, cantor for the Leipzig community. Finally, the chapter compares the treatment of Jewishness and antifascism in reviews from newspapers representing the different political parties.Less
A Survivor officially breached the iron curtain on April 15, 1958, when Herbert Kegel and the Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra performed the work in concert. The performance is situated within the context of state expectations for radio; concerns about fending off the American cultural invasion, as well as its nuclear threat; the contested role of dodecaphony—and Schoenberg in particular—in East German cultural politics; the relationship of the East German state to its Jewish citizens; and the bureaucratic process by which A Survivor was approved for performance and recording. Despite being performed in its entirety and in its original version, discourse about the work was subject to de-Semitization by the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) so that it could serve an antifascist agenda. The historical event of the Warsaw ghetto uprising was appropriated similarly across the Soviet bloc. The chapter explores Kegel's connection to Paul Dessau, as well as the role of Werner Sander, cantor for the Leipzig community. Finally, the chapter compares the treatment of Jewishness and antifascism in reviews from newspapers representing the different political parties.
Joy H. Calico
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780520281868
- eISBN:
- 9780520957701
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520281868.003.0006
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Herbert Kegel and the Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir also gave the Polish premiere of A Survivor from Warsaw when they performed it at the Warsaw Autumn Festival on September 28, 1958. ...
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Herbert Kegel and the Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir also gave the Polish premiere of A Survivor from Warsaw when they performed it at the Warsaw Autumn Festival on September 28, 1958. Thus we have the extraordinary case in which Germans came to Warsaw to perform a work about the German destruction of that city's Jews just fifteen years earlier. This performance is situated within the context of very difficult cultural and political relations between East Germany and Poland, as Poland embraced the Thaw, while East Germany resisted it. While many critics noted the Jewish theme of the work, the ruling political party in each country omitted that detail and described the performance as an act of atonement. This ambiguity allowed the “atonement” to be interpreted as repentance for destroying the Warsaw ghetto in 1943 or for destroying the city of Warsaw in 1944. This chapter recounts the negotiations between the cultural agencies in both countries and studies Polish reviews. They are overwhelmingly positive about A Survivor and equally negative about the other pieces on the program, by East Germans Paul Dessau and Johann Cilenšek.Less
Herbert Kegel and the Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir also gave the Polish premiere of A Survivor from Warsaw when they performed it at the Warsaw Autumn Festival on September 28, 1958. Thus we have the extraordinary case in which Germans came to Warsaw to perform a work about the German destruction of that city's Jews just fifteen years earlier. This performance is situated within the context of very difficult cultural and political relations between East Germany and Poland, as Poland embraced the Thaw, while East Germany resisted it. While many critics noted the Jewish theme of the work, the ruling political party in each country omitted that detail and described the performance as an act of atonement. This ambiguity allowed the “atonement” to be interpreted as repentance for destroying the Warsaw ghetto in 1943 or for destroying the city of Warsaw in 1944. This chapter recounts the negotiations between the cultural agencies in both countries and studies Polish reviews. They are overwhelmingly positive about A Survivor and equally negative about the other pieces on the program, by East Germans Paul Dessau and Johann Cilenšek.
