Prague State Opera reopens - announces major festival of neglected composers

[brendangcarroll]

A Press Release that I just received...which may interest many members of this forum!

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Prague State Opera (Státní Opera) recently re-opened after a three-year closure for renovation, with a gala on 5 January 2020, under the direction of Karl-Heinz Steffens, the new general music director, celebrating the theatre's original opening on 5 January 1888 as the New German Theatre.

The reopening is being marked by a four-year opera and concert series Musica Non Grata exploring the once thriving cultural exchange between the Czech Republic and Germany, showcasing Czech-German-Jewish cultural history in Prague.

Prague, in fact, has three historic theatres. The State Opera was opened in 1888 as the New German Theatre at a time when the number of German speakers in Prague was decreasing and the Czech National Revival was well under way. But as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the relationship between Czech and German culture remained important. There is also the National Theatre (Národní Divadlo) which had its foundation stone laid in 1868 and is a cornerstone of Czech National Revival (the first opera to be presented there was the world premiere of Bedřich Smetana's Libuše), and the historic Estates Theatre, where Mozart's Don Giovanni was premiered.

All three theatres, along with the modern Nová Scéna, will be taking part in Musica Non Grata, and the festival will feature works that originated in Prague and took the world by storm during the first half of the 20th century only to be later silenced through force for political reasons. The series will be launched with a concert on 27 May 2020, featuring excerpts from the works to be performed, followed by a new production of Jaromir Weinberger's opera Svanda Dudak (Svanda the Bagpiper) n 27 Mary 2020. Weinberger's opera premiered in 1926 and was highly popular until Weinberger's music was banned by the Nazi's in the 1930s (Weinberger's family was of Jewish origin).

Other composers whose work will be showcased during Musica Non Grata will be Alexander von Zemlinsky (who was musical director of the Deutsches Landestheater in Prague from 1911 to 1927 and premiered Schoenberg's Erwartung there in 1924), Ernst Krenek (during the closure period the State Opera performed Krenek's Johnny Spielt auf at the National Theatre last year), Franz Schreker, Hans Krasa, Brno-born Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Erwin Schulhoff, Pavel Haas and Viktor Ullmann.

There will also be a focus on women composers; the twenties and early thirties was a time of emancipation for female composers and women such as Vitezslava Kapralova, Emmy Destinn, Julie Reisserova and the Scottish-Czech composer Geraldine Mucha (Scottish-born, she married theCzech writer Jiří Mucha, son of the painter Alphonse Mucha, and lived in Prague for 60 years), all of whom managed to step out of the shadow of their male colleagues at the time.

NB All performances of Musica Non Grata will be made available digitally by streaming and some of them will be available subsequently on DVD, CD and in online archives.
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It is always a pleasure to visit Prague. Now there is even more reason to go.....

[Alan Howe]

Good news. Just a gentle reminder, though, that Krenek, Krasa, Schulhoff, Haas and Ullmann are beyond the remit of this forum, as are the female composers mentioned.

[Droosbury]

This is very exciting news indeed. It's really good to see the Czech musical establishment reconnect with its musical heritage beyond the usual Smetana/Dvorak axis, particularly the rich cross fertilisation between Vienna and Prague as exemplified by Zemlinsky's tenure in the latter city. And even if the actual music of some of the composers is deemed "beyond the remit of this site", surely it is relevant to hear about them, given that they were largely all students of either Zemlinsky and Schreker and so may be of direct interest to those interested in those "approved" composers? I realise there are lots of blurred lines here – and we keep butting up against them – but one of the fascinations of 1900-1938 period rests in how multiple strands could co-exist and feed into each other.

Whatever, the promise that performances will be made available is even more welcome news. Czech Radio has already put up online a lot of very interesting archive performances of works that are otherwise not available; this latest initiative shows an equally open-minded approach to accessibility that is really praiseworthy.

Thanks very much for sharing this news, Brendan.

[Alan Howe]

And even if the actual music of some of the composers is deemed "beyond the remit of this site", surely it is relevant to hear about them, given that they were largely all students of either Zemlinsky and Schreker and so may be of direct interest to those interested in those "approved" composers?

If members wish to discuss these later composers, there are other web forums available for that purpose. If we followed this logic, we'd be discussing pupils of their pupils and so on, so no, as far as this site is concerned, they're irrelevant and discussion of them will not be permitted.

[Mark Thomas]

Absolutely so.

[Alan Howe]

Just to add: when people post here, they are automatically consenting to the conditions we set, including our remit. This is not a general music discussion site, but one dedicated to the forgotten music of the romantic era in which we, the administrators, are primarily interested. Please, therefore, abide by the terms of our remit.