German music stage
The Deutsche Musikbühne , also spelled Deutsche Musik-Bühne , was an opera ensemble organized as a touring theater . The pianist, conductor and Kapellmeister Hans Oppenheim and the theater director Heinrich Reuss founded this "traveling music theater" in 1931. Oppenheim directed this musical theater from an artistic point of view, while Reuss took care of all other matters in the management of the theater. The opera ensemble was brought into line by the National Socialists in 1934 as the "Reichswanderoper" .
Motivation situation and artistic practice
In 1931 Reuss and Oppenheim founded the Deutsche Musikbühne as a “touring opera theater” based in Berlin out of dissatisfaction with the “repertory theater system” . As artistic director, Oppenheim was instrumental in the demanding repertoire of this theater. The opera "Rodelinda" by Georg Friedrich Handel , which was first performed in Berlin in September 1932, was followed by national and international tours with, among others, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro" and Richard Strauss ' "Intermezzo". For example, from February 4 to 6, 1933, the ensemble performed in the city of Memel , which had not maintained an opera ensemble for a long time.
Even at that time, renowned music theater experts belonged to the ensemble with the set designer Wilhelm Reinking and the baritone Knut Olof Strandberg . With these activities Reuss and Oppenheim were among those theater people who had made a contribution to reforming the opera in Germany during the Weimar Republic . This applies to both their journalistic work as well as their commitment to the Deutsche Musikbühne , "which should definitely offer an alternative to the artistic and organizational constraints of the existing opera theater."
The quick end
In March 1933, Oppenheim was forced out of his leadership role at the traveling theater because of his Jewish origins. He stood in the way of plans to offer the notoriously underfunded enterprise of the National Socialist cultural policy in the hope of sustainable subsidies. In 1934 the stage was subordinated to the organization Kraft durch Freude and brought into line as the Deutsche Musik-Bühne eV (Reichswanderoper) . Under the latter name, von Reuss and the conductor Paul van Kempen made numerous recordings of classical works at Deutsche Grammophon . Reuss also gave up his leadership position in the music theater in 1934. At the time of the Gleichschaltung in 1934, Oppenheim had already emigrated from Germany.
literature
- Matthias Pasdzierny: Hans Oppenheim. In: LexM (dictionary of persecuted musicians of the Nazi regime). Institute for Historical Musicology at the University of Hamburg, 2015, accessed on September 16, 2019 . There is also a detailed treatise by the “Deutsche Musikbühne”.
- Reuss, Heinrich Erbprinz von, theater manager In: Walther Killy (Hrsg.): Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie (DBE) . 1st edition. tape 8 . Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag; KG Sauer (paperback edition), Munich 2001, ISBN 3-423-59053-X , p. 257 . There some statements about Heinrich Reuss and the "Deutsche Musikbühne".