The miracle

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The miracle , engl. The Miracle , is Karl Gustav Vollmoeller's central and most important stage work. The work is difficult to assign to a specific genre. In terms of its dramatic structure, the integral and accompanying music by Engelbert Humperdinck and the numerous church songs and sacred chants integrated by Vollmoeller, it is not unlike an opera . Since the work manages without spoken language, it was and is called pantomime from the beginning , without being one in the sense of the word. Although the piece also contains a number of dance interludes and ballet-like dance scenes, it cannot be called ballet .

Premieres

The miracle had its world premiere on December 23, 1911 in London in the Olympia Hall . Due to its three elements, music - speechlessness - dance, Das Mirakel had no language barriers to fight and was only able to assert itself throughout Europe and later worldwide without any problems. The premiere in the Rotunda (Vienna) followed on September 18, 1912, the premiere in Prague on January 25, 1913, before its German premiere in Berlin on April 30, 1914 at the Busch Circus .

Due to the First World War , the premiere in the USA was postponed to January 24, 1924. It took place on Broadway , New York, in the Century Theater ; on August 16, 1925, the premiere took place on the occasion of the Salzburg Festival .

content

The plot is based on a medieval legend Marie, which in its original form in Caesarius of Heisterbach in Dialogus miraculorum be found. It's about a young nun's relationship with the Virgin Mary. A radiant young knight kidnaps the nun, for whom an odyssey begins over several years, which is filled with numerous humiliations and great suffering. Meanwhile, the Virgin Mary represents the nun and does her work in the monastery. When the nun finally returns broken and aged, she and Maria swap roles. In contrast to the medieval legend, the baby Jesus plays an important role in Vollmoeller's Das Mirakel . Vollmoeller reinterprets the virgin birth by letting the Holy Virgin adopt the nun's baby instead of a child.

background

Vollmoeller created a dramatic - pantomime - dance-like plot around the given medieval core plot. Max Reinhardt staged the play in front of up to 30,000 spectators with an army of over 2,000 actors, singers, choirs of up to 150 members, dancers and tons of extras on a huge stage arranged like an amphitheater. The visual impression was supplemented by a musical background, which was partly congenially coordinated with the plot by Engelbert Humperdinck . The orchestra consisted of up to 200 members, some of whom were conducted by Humperdinck personally, others by other well-known conductors, such as Modest Altschuler .

Adaptations

Text book

On the occasion of the premiere in London in 1911, the content of the play was printed and sold in an abbreviated English text version. In April 1912 the German version was published by Bote & Bock in Berlin.

Movie

Due to the success of the Singspiel, the material was filmed as Das Mirakel in 1912 . The Austrian-German co-production was directed by Michel Carré and Max Reinhardt .

Reception history and effect

The history of the reception of "Das Mirakel / The Miracle" ranges from the world premiere in London in 1911, the tours throughout Germany and Europe from 1912 to 1914, the performances during the First World War in Germany and other neutral countries (Sweden, Switzerland ) about the complete revision in New York in 1924, the year on Broadway (1924), the North American tour 1925–1930, the Salzburg Festival intermezzo in 1925, the new tour of Germany in 1926/27, the Hollywood production in January 1927, to the last complete revision on the occasion of the 20th anniversary in London in 1931.

Revisions

The miracle was played by its two protagonists -  Karl Gustav Vollmoeller as author and idea generator and Max Reinhardt as director and implementer - a total of eleven times during its performance phase (1911–1934 for the play) and (1912–1929 and 1959–1962 for the film) revised, whereby there are four revisions documented in writing by the author Karl Vollmoeller. Max Reinhardt made the remaining changes on the occasion of his various productions in consultation with Vollmoeller. The changes related primarily to the role of SPIELMANN engl. THE PIPER, this figure provided by Vollmoeller as a mixture of “Pied Piper of Hameln”, “Mephisto”, “Death”, “Temptation” but also with elements of the Greek shepherd god “Pan”. The public loved this figure, much like Goethe's Faust Mephisto. For dramaturgical reasons, Max Reinhardt wanted the roles of the minstrel to be split up for the USA. For example, Vollmoeller placed “Death” at his side as an independent figure. But in 1931, on the occasion of the anniversary production in London, Vollmoeller withdrew this change and left the minstrel his original ambivalence and conflict.

Two productions deserve special mention, each time leading to an extensive revision: The Salzburg Festival production on August 16, 1925, in which Humperdinck's music was supplemented with additional compositions by Bernhard Paumgartner for the interlude. Paumgartner conducted the Mozarteum Orchestra and was accompanied by the Mozarteum Choir. Hermann Thimig shone in the role of the minstrel . As a knight William Dieterle , as a robbery count Oskar Homolka and as a priest Otto Preminger . The new production in London in the version of April 9, 1932, in which the minstrel got his old role back and the figure of death was deleted. At the same time, Vollmoeller and Reinhardt emphasized the dancing element of the minstrel in this extraordinary production by entrusting Léonide Massine with both the independent choreography and the dance implementation alongside Tilly Losch .

literature

  • Karl Vollmoeller: The Miracle . Gale & Polden Ltd., London 1911
  • Karl Vollmoeller: The miracle . Ed. Bote & Bock, Berlin 1912
  • Alfred Kerr : Gesammelte Schriften, Die Welt im Drama Volume 3. S. Fischer, Berlin 1919
  • Frederik D. Tunnat: Karl Vollmoeller: A cosmopolitan life under the sign of the miracle . tredition, [Hamburg], ISBN 978-3-86850-235-0
  • Frederik D. Tunnat: Karl Vollmoeller: poet and cultural manager; a biography . tredition, [Hamburg] 2008, ISBN 978-3-86850-000-4
  • Ines R. Braver: Karl Gustav Vollmoeller . Diss. New York University, 1961
  • Heinz Kindermann: European Theater History , O. Müller, 1957
  • Oliver Martin Sayler: Max Reinhardt and his theater . Brentano's, 1924
  • Heinz Braulich: Max Reinhardt: Theater between dream and reality . Henschel, 1966
  • Josep Gregor: Theater direction in the world of our century: great directors of the modern stage . Austria edition, 1958
  • Franz Horch, Hans Rothe : Max Reinhardt's game plans 1905–1930 , R. Piper, 1930
  • Tobias Becker: The double miracle. Theater miracles and wonder theater in the early 20th century, in: Alexander CT Geppert, Till Kössler (eds.), Miracles. The poetics and politics of amazement in the 20th century , Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2011, pp. 332–362.