FHS 2010 LIST C OPTION MUSIC IN THE WEIMAR

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Britten Being Musical

FHS 2010 LIST C OPTION

MUSIC IN THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC

Lecture 5: Zeitoper (‘Contemporary Opera’)

Laura:

Ekel! Kanaille! Tyrann!

Eduard:

Scheusal! Bestie! Hexe! Weibsstück!

Laura:

Dick und gefräßig!

Eduard:

Dumm und faul!

Laura:

Vergifter meiner Jugend!

Eduard:

Nie jung gewesen!

Laura:

Bei dir vorzeitig gealtert.

Eduard:

Immer mußt du recht haben!

Laura:

Also, wir zanken uns wieder!

Eduard:

Unsere Lieblingsbeschäftigung.

Laura:

Bastard! Scoundrel! Tyrant!

Eduard:

Monster! Beast! Witch! Cow!

Laura:

Fat and greedy!

Eduard:

Stupid and lazy!

Laura:

You poisoned my youth!

Eduard:

You were never young!

Laura:

Because you made me old before my time!

Eduard:

You always have to be right!

Laura:

Look, we’re fighting again!

Eduard:

Our favourite pastime.

[… dishes are thrown around; Eduard produces a revolver and shouts ‘Die!’ (‘Stirb!’); Laura responds ‘I’d like nothing better! – freedom for me, prison for you!’; ‘You’ve got a point’ says Eduard, putting the gun away …]

Laura & Eduard:

Wir lassen uns scheiden.

Laura & Eduard:

We’re getting a divorce.

Structure:

1. Opera in Crisis?

2. A Solution: Zeitoper

3. ‘We’re getting a divorce!’: Hindemith’s Neues vom Tage (1929)

4. ‘Kick or be kicked’: Weill and Brecht’s Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (1930)

1. Opera in Crisis?

Some anxieties surrounding opera as a genre:
- Still economically viable?

Threat from new entertainments and media: ‘The opera … has less to offer the eye than the film has – and colour-film will soon be here, too. Add music, and the general public will hardly need to hear an opera sung and acted any more, unless a new path is found.’

Schoenberg, ‘The Future of the Opera’ (1927), in Leonard Stein (ed.), Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg (Berkeley, 1984), pp. 336-7

Lack of contemporary social relevance

2. A Solution: Zeitoper

Opportunity to reform opera: ‘The absolute music of the present … has become a game that is only interesting to those who know the rules. It has neither the capacity nor the inclination to address itself to the uninitiated community’

‘I am of the opinion that the strongest possibilities [for the expansion of music] lie in the realm of the theatre. The theatre is still up to a certain point a vital necessity for a large number of the public. When the curtain goes up in the theatre, we still see the formation of that communal body which is an essential part of any community, i.e. a functional work of art. … As far as the material itself is concerned, it is a matter of finding that all-encompassing circle of character types, facts, situations, and data that we can sagely assume will be well known and interesting to the greatest number of our contemporaries.’

‘We want to live, look life in the face and say yes to it with a passionate heart. Then we will suddenly have art and not know how it happened. It should never serve to express our lack of this thing or that, but should always flow out of the abundance of life; then it will be right and above all our muddlings.’

Ernst Krenek, ‘Music of Today [1925]’, in Susan C. Cook, Opera for a New Republic (Michigan, 1988), pp. 193-203
See also Cook, Opera for a New Republic, pp. 9-39

Krenek’s Jonny spielt auf as the first and most archetypical Zeitoper (?)

3. ‘We’re getting a divorce!’: Hindemith’s Neues vom Tage (‘News of the Day’)

A Zeitoper on the subject of divorce (German: ‘Scheidung’, ‘scheiden’, ‘geschieden’)

First part, fourth scene. Duet. Kitsch.

To be performed with great passion. Rubato.

Hermann:

Geliebte!

Laura:

Geliebter!

Hermann:

Ewig Geliebte!

Hermann (behaving as if in a real love-duet): Beloved!

Laura (also putting herself into a false ecstasy): Beloved!

Hermann:

Eternal beloved!

Laura:

Nein, nicht so lange!

Hermann:

Das ist ja nur eine Probe.

Laura (breaking off):

No, that’s too much!

Hermann:

That was only a rehearsal.

Unendlich, unendlich Geliebte!

Traum meiner Seele!

Laura:

O Lenz des Lebens!

Hermann:

Wonne des Herzens!

Laura:

Höhe des Gefühls!

(beginning again)

Immortal beloved!

Dream of my soul!

Laura:

O, Life’s Springtime!

Hermann:

Heart’s bliss!

Laura (awkwardly):

Passion’s heights!

Hermann:

Inniger! Feuriger!

Legen Sie die Arm um mich!

Laura:

Gehört das dazu?

Hermann:

Es ist im Preise einbegriffen.

Hermann (instructing):

More feeling! More fiery!

Put your arm around me!

Laura:

Is that part of the deal?

Hermann:

It’s all included in the price.

O wüßtest du, wie ich mich sehnte.

Aufrauchst mein Blut

in wilden Lavaströmen

wie ein Sturzbach,

der zu Tale schäumt.

Laura:

Sie Wilder!

In Ihnen will ich vergehen.

Oh lassen Sie mich dein sein!

Hermann:

Kaum kann ich widerstehen.

(with passion)

If you but knew my yearning.

My blood flows

like wild lava,

like a torrent,

as it foams into the valley.

Laura:

You’re wild!

I want to expire in your embrace.

Oh, let me be yours!

Hermann:

How can I deny you?

Laura:

Gehört auch das dazu?

Hermann:

Es ist im Preise einbegriffen.

Laura (again taken aback):

Is this part of the deal too?

Hermann:

It’s included in the price.

Hermann:

Laß mich dich umgaukeln,

mich Schmetterling dich Rose,

verseng’ mich Mott’ in deinem Licht.

Möcht’ meine Fittiche um dich schlagen

und dich ins Land der großen Sehnsucht tra---

[Laura:

Ist mir doch, als ob ich träumte.

Entflieht noch nicht,

zerbrechliche Stunden.

Kann ich das Glück zu ertragen wagen,

willst Herz, du über Ertragen schla---]

Hermann:

O, let me flutter around you,

I, the butterfly, you, the rose,

I, the moth, singe my wings in your light

Would that those wings could beat about you

and carry you into the realm of great longi---

[Laura:

It’s just as if I were dreaming.

Be not fleeting,

fragile time.

Do I dare bear this happiness?

Heart, will you beat onwa---]

Laura:

Gehört auch dieses Geschwätz dazu?

Hermann:

Auch das ist im Preise einbegriffen.

Laura (impatiently):

Is this nonsense part of the deal, too?

Hermann:

It’s all included.

Laura & Hermann:

Ekstase! Wonne! Dein!

Hermann:

Nun Kuß, auch das gehört dazu.

Laura & Hermann:

Ecstasy! Bliss! I am yours!

Hermann:

Now kiss me – that’s also part of the deal.

Second part, fifth scene

Laura:

Nicht genug zu loben sind die Vorzügen

der Warmwasserversorgung

Heißes Wasser tags, nachts

ein Bad bereit in drei Minuten

Kein Gasgeruch, keine Explosion,

Kein Lebensgefahr.

Fort, fort mit den alten Gasbadeöfen.

Laura:

The advantages of the warm water supply really can’t be praised enough.

Hot water, by day, by night

A bath ready in three minutes

No smell of gas, no explosions

Nothing life-threatening.

Old gas water heaters, be gone.

Moral: Eduard and Laura as the news of the day (‘Neues vom Tage’), and as such, they have to behave in the way the press expects

See Cook, Opera for a New Republic, pp. 147-71

4. ‘Kick or be kicked’: Weill and Brecht’s Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (‘The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny’)

‘The musical development of recent years had led initially to the realization that people must withdraw as much as possible from the sphere of influence of Richard Wagner. … [O]ur music no longer wishes to express floating atmosphere or nervously exaggerated sentiments, but the powerful emotional complexes of our era. In the transparent clarity of our emotional life lie the possibilities for the creation of new opera; for precisely from this clarity arises the simplicity of musical language that opera demands.’

Weill, ‘New Opera’, in Kim Kowalke, Kurt Weill in Europe (Michigan, 1979), p. 464

‘The “Zeitstück” [generic name for ‘contemporary’ theatre pieces], as we have come to know it in recent years, moved superficial manifestations of life in our time onto centre stage. … Man in our time looks different, and what drives him outwardly and motivates him inwardly should not be so portrayed for the mere purpose of being current at any price or in the interest of topicality which holds validity only for the narrowest time span of its creation.’

Weill, ‘Zeitoper’, in Kowalke, p. 482

‘It has been proven that it is very possible to enter into closer collaboration with equal representatives of other arts for the creation of a musical stage work that can give a non-topical, unique and conclusive representation of our time … [A] branch of opera is evolving into a new epic form, as I employ it with Brecht in the Mahagonny-Songspiel.’

Weill, ‘Shifts in Musical Composition’, in Kowalke, p. 480

‘The new operatic theatre … does not propose to describe, but to report. It no longer proposes to form its plot according to moments of suspenseful tension, but to tell about man, his actions and what impels him to commit them.’

Weill, ‘Zeitoper’, in Kowalke, p. 484

Mahagonny (1930) an ‘epic’ opera:

A series of ‘morality-pictures’ created in collaboration with Bertolt Brecht

See Jürgen Schebera, Kurt Weill: An Illustrated Life (New Haven, 1995), pp. 89-194

‘The main figure of the play is the city’ (Weill): a highly ironized capitalist (American?) paradise where people can do what they like – as long as they can pay for it
Note use of Verfremdungseffekte (‘alienation effects’): attempts to jar the spectator from his/her comfortable bourgeois theatre pose – to force him/her to think, to adopt a critical stance

See, as one example of many, John Willett, The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht: A Study from Eight Aspects (London, 1967)

Act II, scene v: Jenny’s ‘Blues’

Denn wie man sich bettet, so liegt man,

Es deckt einen keiner dazu,

und wenn einer tritt, dann bin ich es

und wird einer getreten, wird du’s!

You make your own bed and you lie in it,

No-one will make it for you,

And if someone’s doing the kicking, it’s me

And if someone’s getting kicked, it’s you!

A stringent anti-capitalist political message (Brecht)? Or simply a parable about human greed (Weill)?

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