The guarantee (Weill)
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| Title: | The guarantee |
| Shape: | Opera in three acts |
| Original language: | German |
| Music: | Kurt Weill |
| Libretto : | Caspar Neher |
| Literary source: | Johann Gottfried Herder : The African legal verdict |
| Premiere: | March 10, 1932 |
| Place of premiere: | Municipal Opera Berlin |
| Place and time of the action: | Somewhere and sometime in the fictional country of Urb |
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The guarantee is an opera in three acts composed by Kurt Weill with a libretto by Caspar Neher based on motifs from Johann Gottfried Herder's parable The African Jurisdiction , which was premiered on March 10, 1932 at the Städtische Oper Berlin .
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The setting is the fantasy land Urbs. When the cattle dealer Mattes lost his belongings, his friend, the grain dealer Orth, took over the guarantee for him. But a new power comes to the government, with it new laws and a "commissioner" who makes decisions about life and death. Dictatorship and war corrupt the two friends into well-earning, compliant instruments of power. In the end, the grain dealer saves his skin by handing the cattle dealer over to the angry crowd. Johann Mattes is slain.
Performance history
The guarantee was Weill's first opera after the break with Bertolt Brecht . With a libretto by Caspar Neher based on motifs from Johann Gottfried Herder's parable The African Judgment , Weill's opera was premiered on March 10, 1932 at the Städtische Oper Berlin (director: Carl Ebert ). The opera was then only performed on April 12, 1932 by Walter Bruno Iltz in Düsseldorf (conductor: Jascha Horenstein ) and by Paul Bekker in Wiesbaden, then banned by the National Socialists and, unlike z. B. the Threepenny Opera , not performed for a long time after the Second World War .
Web links
- Werner Wolf : Struggle for money and power - "The guarantee" by Kurt Weill in Dessau. In: Oper & Tanz, edition 2002/2003
- Johann Gottfried Herder : The Eternal Burden / The African Judgment
Individual evidence
- ^ Paulus Manker : Walter Bruno Iltz . The exposure of a hero. Alexander Verlag , Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-89581-340-5 .