Frank the Fifth
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Title: | Frank the Fifth |
Genus: | comedy |
Original language: | German |
Author: | Friedrich Dürrenmatt |
Music: | Paul Burkhard |
Publishing year: | 1959 |
Premiere: | March 19, 1959 |
Place of premiere: | Schauspielhaus Zurich , Zurich |
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Frank the Fifth (subtitle: Opera from a private bank ) is a musical comedy by the Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt . The music for this was composed by his compatriot Paul Burkhard . The world premiere took place on March 19, 1959 at the Schauspielhaus Zurich .
action
Frank the Fifth runs a bank in succession with his wife Ottilie. The business that can be called criminal is running worse than in the past , primarily due to the increase in public control mechanisms ( computerization ). That's one of the reasons why Ottilie and Gottfried Frank want to give up the business. They raised their two children in so-called sheltered conditions, as their parents' livelihood is not based on inner passion. In the parents' opinion, son and daughter know nothing about the bank's criminal machinations, because Ottilie and Frank have built up a second bourgeois existence in addition to this one, which has almost no connection to their banking activities. However, the parents' assumption proves to be a fallacy. In spite of their good upbringing, the adult children are also familiar with extortionate methods and prostitution. Finally, they take over the bank through a surprise coup, are subsequently denied by their parents and the era of Frank the Sixth begins. In this sense, the piece shows the incompatibility of capital and humanity.
interpretation
The comedy about a private bank, influenced by Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus , stages the impossibility of freedom in a democracy damaged by power and financial interests.
Frank the Fifth was often related to Bertolt Brecht's Threepenny Opera , which Dürrenmatt defended in an interview with Horst Bienek in 1961: “I don't refer to Brecht, but they want to arrest me with Brecht”. In contrast to the Threepenny Opera , the songs in Frank der Fifth “do not place the piece in the general, [...] but in the bearable. [...] In Frank the Fifth , people sing when they lie - in the Threepenny Opera when they speak the truth. ”Nevertheless, Dürrenmatt was convinced that his play“ will have to sail under the false flag of the Threepenny Opera for a long time , that is his fate . "
Individual evidence
- ^ Heinz Ludwig Arnold : Friedrich Dürrenmatt. The classic on stage. Conversations 1961–1970 . Diogenes, Zurich 1996, ISBN 3-257-06111-0 , p. 118
- ^ Arnold: Friedrich Dürrenmatt. The classic on stage. Conversations 1961–1970 , pp. 120–121