Harry Stangenberg

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Harry Stangenberg ( April 21, 1893 in Stockholm - November 3, 1941 there ) was a Swedish opera director and from 1927 senior director of the Stuttgart State Opera . He was expelled by the National Socialists in 1933.

life and work

His father was August Emil Stangenberg, an ENT doctor (1860–1950). He graduated from Stockholm School of Commerce , but then turned to opera . He completed his apprenticeship from 1913 to 1916 as a trainee at the Royal Opera in Stockholm, as assistant director to Max Reinhardt in Berlin and at the Munich Court Opera . Then the first productions in Bern, Frankfurt am Main and in Riga. In 1919 he was hired as in-house director at the Royal Opera in Stockholm, where he successfully staged operas from the Baroque to the present day, including Gluck's Iphigenie on Tauris , the Rosenkavalier by Hofmannsthal and Strauss , the dead eyes of Eugen d'Albert , The Crown Bride by Strindberg and Rangström and Mona Lisa by Beatrice Dovsky and Max von Schillings .

1922 was the year in which the Salzburg Festival had opera performances for the first time. Four Mozart operas were shown, including The Marriage of Figaro in a production by Harry Stangenberg and Hans Breuer . From August 1, 1927, Stangenberg was senior director of the Stuttgart State Opera , appointed at the suggestion of General Manager Albert Kehm . He knew him from Bern. Stangenberg took over half of the ten new productions every year and gave the program a distinctive profile. The focus was on contemporary creativity on the one hand, and highly interesting rediscoveries on the other. The latter category includes, for example, Nerone by Arrigo Boito , Die Jüdin by Jacques Fromental Halévy or Rusalka by Antonín Dvořák . Stravinski's story of the soldier , Hindemith's Cardillac , Krenek's Jonny plays or the two short operas The Protagonist and The Tsar can be photographed by Georg Kaiser and Kurt Weill in the category of time operas .

On November 20, 1930, a verbal xenophobic and anti-Semitic hate orgy poured down on the director, who was accused of staging “foreign and Jewish operas generously with German money”. The text was published in the Völkischer Beobachter , which included the question: “How much longer?” The month before that, hateful articles against the world premiere of the comedy Shadows over Harlem by Ossip Dymow were published. Kehr and Stangenberg then gave up the innovative game plan policy in anticipation of "the calming of the political situation". However, the situation did not calm down and the planned performances of Berg's Wozzeck , Weinberger's Die Menschen von Poker Flat and the rise and fall of the city of Mahagonny von Brecht and Weill did not take place, although some of the performance rights had already been acquired. The question “How much longer?” Was answered by the new Nazi director Otto Kraus, who announced his resignation at the end of March 1933 and cynically recommended that the director apply “to Berlin theaters”. The expulsion of the ghost from Germany was in full swing. Harry Stangenberg left the country on July 12, 1933. He went back to Sweden and worked as a freelance director again. In 1938 he was appointed senior director of the Royal Stockholm Opera. In the 1936 film Flowers from Nice, he was the "musical director".

He died in 1941 at the age of 48 in the Stockholm municipality of Engelbrecht and was buried in the Stockholm North Cemetery .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sveriges Dödbok 1901–2009, DVD-ROM, Version 5.00, Sveriges Släktforskarförbund (2010).
  2. ^ Stangenberg, Harry in Nordisk familjebok
  3. ↑ a b Hannes Heer : Silent voices. The expulsion of the "Jews" from the opera 1933 to 1945. The fight for the Württemberg State Theater in Stuttgart. An exhibition. Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-86331-303-6 , p. 115
  4. ↑ Harry Stangenberg in the IMDb
  5. ↑ SvenskaGravar ( Memento of the original dated November 7, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed on May 3, 2019 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.svenskagravar.se
  6. ↑ Sweden's death book 1901–2009, DVD-ROM, Version 5.00, Swedish Society for Gender Studies (2010)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Stangenberg, Harry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish opera director
DATE OF BIRTH April 21, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Stockholm , Sweden
DATE OF DEATH November 3, 1941
Place of death Stockholm , Sweden