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Gotham Chamber Opera Recreates 1927 Baden-Baden Festival Premieres

Oct. 02, 2013

Gotham Chamber Opera Recreates 1927 Baden-Baden Festival Premieres

In a performance run that opens on October 23, New York's Gotham Chamber Opera recreates the historic 1927 Baden-Baden Festival production that featured the premieres of chamber operas by Paul Hindemith, Darius Milhaud, Ernst Toch, and Kurt Weill. The event includes four pivotal operatic works of 20th-century modernism: Hindemith’s Hin und zurück (There and Back), Milhaud’s L’enlèvement d’Europe (The Abduction of Europa), Toch’s Die Prinzessin auf der Erbse (The Princess and the Pea), and Weill’s Mahagonny Songspiel. Gotham Chamber Opera’s production, titled Baden-Baden 1927, is directed by Paul Curran, with production design by German neo-expressionist painter Georg Baselitz and Court Watson. Soprano Helen Donath joins the stellar cast, which also includes soprano Maeve Höglund, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Rivera, tenors Daniel Montenegro and Matthew Tuell, baritone Michael Mayes and bass John Cheek. The orchestra is conducted by Neal Goren.

Hindemith’s Hin und zurück is a brief operatic “sketch” composed in a cabaret form, with rapidly paced scenes that satirize the dramatic narratives of standard operatic repertoire. The work was completed within a few days and includes a libretto by the Berlin cabaret author Marcellus Schiffer, with whom Hindemith collaborated on his full-length opera, Neues vom Tage.

In 1927, Milhaud composed three mini-operas from Greek mythology, of which L’enlèvement d’Europe was the first. French diplomat Henri Hoppenot contributed the libretto for each and the first complete performance of the trilogy took place at the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden in 1928. Orchestrated for chamber ensemble of winds, percussion and strings, L’enlèvement d’Europe employs a vocal sextet, which is given the role of the classical Greek chorus. 

Toch’s short opera, Die Prinzessin auf der Erbse, based on the fairly tale by Hans-Christian Andersen, features a libretto by the sculptor Benno Elkan. The opera, unique in its wit and comedic depth, follows the trial of a young girl who claims to be a princess, with the test of a pea between the mattresses of her bed.

Perhaps most familiar among the works is Mahagonny Songspiel, Weill’s first collaboration with Bertolt Brecht, which premiered at the festival and was later developed into a full-length opera. Set in a fictional American hedonistic paradise, Mahagonny shocked audiences with its parody of German operatic traditions and use of American musical idioms. The succès de scandale of Mahagonny encouraged Weill and Brecht to continue work on the full-length opera Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, which premiered at Leipzig in March 1930. Years later, Lenya recalled the impact of Mahagonny Songspiel at Baden-Baden:

It was quite shocking for the people in the middle of that culture-carrying crowd… Mahagonny was so new, it was so entirely new. Real avant-garde … for a festival like that: to come into a highbrow festival with tunes again. At that time it was all atonal music, and here was somebody who wrote tunes people could sing. Like a Verdi or Puccini. That was the great sensation.

All performances are staged at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College in New York and subsequent performance take place on October 25, 26 and 29.

For details on Gotham Chamber Opera’s production, please visit www.gothamchamberopera.org

Learn more on the life and music of Kurt Weill by visiting www.wkf.org and www.universaledition.com

Visit www.schott-music.com to learn more about Paul Hindemith and Ernst Toch.

Information on Darius Milhaud can be found at www.universaledition.com. 

Paul Hindemith
Hin und zurück (1927)
A sketch with music, op. 45a
Text (Ger) by Marcellus Schiffer
English translation by Marion Farquhar
S, 2T, Bar, B, speaker, actor; orchestra
1.0.1.asax.1-0.1.1.0-pno(4hand).pno(2hnd) – backstage: harmonica
12’

Ernst Toch
Die Prinzessin auf der Erbse (1927)
Text (Ger) by Hans Christian Andersen von Benno Elkan
2S, Mz, 2T, Bar, B; orchestra
2(2.pic).1.1.1(cbsn)-1.1.0.1-3perc-str
50’

Darius Milhaud
L’enlèvement d’Europe (1927)
Opéra-minute in 8 scenes
Text (Ger) by Henri Hoppenot
SATB (vocal sextet); orchestra
1.1.1.1-0.0.0.0-tpt-perc-str
10’

Kurt Weill
Mahagonny Songspiel (1927)
Text (Ger) by Bertolt Brecht
English translation by Michael Feingold
2S, 2T, 2B; orchestra
2cl(bcl).asax-2tpt.tbn-timp.perc-pno-2vn
30’

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