Kevin Clarke

Kevin Clarke (* 14. February 1967 in Berlin ) is a musicologist , focusing operetta and author of several books on the subjects of jazz and operettas Revue of 1920 years , operetta under the Swastika and ( Homo -) sexuality and operetta . Since 2006 he has been director of the Operetta Research Center Amsterdam .

career

Clarke studied musicology and literary history at the Free University of Berlin and the University of Milan . He then worked as a critic and journalist for Der Tagesspiegel , Bunte and Playboy and, since 2003, in Amsterdam, for Orpheus and De Groene Amsterdammer , among others . He produced a series of programs for the SWR about operetta composers in exile ( Werner Richard Heymann , Robert Stolz , Emmerich Kálmán , Ralph Benatzky etc.). He was awarded a thesis at the Free University of Berlin on the subject of “The jazz band already plays in heaven”. Emmerich Kálmán and the transatlantic operetta 1928–32 doctorate .

In 2005 he conceived and organized the conference Operetta under the swastika for the Dresden State Operetta . His contributions on the performance practice of operettas have been published in the Frankfurter Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft and in Musik-Konzept . 2007 published his books Glitter and be Gay: The authentic operetta and her gay admirers and The White Horse Inn - On the trail of a world success , and also essays to Vienna in the sound film operetta (for the exhibition catalog If I Sundays in my cinema go ' of the German Film Archive ) as well as a contribution on operetta and National Socialism for the exhibition catalog The Suspicious Saxophone of the Berliner Philharmoniker , in 2008 an article on Erich Wolfgang Korngold and the operetta was published by Edition Text + Criticism .

In 2009 he gave a lecture at the University of Amiens on the pornography of the operetta , which was published in a conference proceedings. In 2010 he gave a lecture at the Colloquium Music in the entertainment cinema of the Third Reich (University of Music, Würzburg) on ​​the subject of "Film Operetta in the Nazi Era" and at the symposium Between the Chairs: Remigrants in the Entertaining Music Theater of the Fifties (University of the Arts, Berlin) on "Two cowboys in three-quarter time: Emmerich Kálmán's Arizona Lady or the attempt at a transatlantic post-war operetta"

In 2006, Clarke founded the Operetta Research Center Amsterdam , of which he is director. The aim of the Dutch foundation is to examine the relationship between National Socialism and operetta in particular, and to review the silver operetta of the 1920s and bring it up for discussion again. In addition, LGBT issues and gender aspects are a particular focus of the work of the Research Center, as Clarke said in an interview. In 2008, the Research Center in Amsterdam organized a conference on the future of operetta, in collaboration with the Theaterinstituut Nederland (TIN). From 2008 he coached the students of the master's degree in operetta / classical music theater at the Tilburg Conservatory and holds lectures on the operetta repertoire and questions about the performance of operettas. Since the winter semester 2018 taught Clarke at the University of Osnabrück at the Institute of Music musical and operetta history.

As a dramaturge and consultant, Clarke is associated with Opera aan het IJ and worked on the European premiere of the US operetta The Beastly Bombing: A Terrible Tale of Terrorists Tamed by the Tangles of True Love in February 2009. He is also involved in the rediscovery of the German-Dutch operetta Insel der Träume (1938) by the well-known German film composer Hans-Martin Majewski and the librettist Joachim von Ostau.

Clarke has worked on various CD releases of operettas and has written corresponding booklet texts, including for the Valhalla editions of Benatzkys König mit dem Umenschirm and Axel an der Himmelstür (with Zarah Leander), and also for Gala Records in the case of Der poor Jonathan (Millöcker), gypsy primas and Dutch women (Kálmán) as well as the edition of White Horse Inn with the original Broadway cast 1936 for Sepia Records .

In 2010 he curated the exhibition Glitter and be Gay: Erik Charell and the gay operetta for the Schwule Museum * in Berlin. In February 2012 he curated the exhibition Welt der Operetta for the Austrian Theater Museum together with Marie-Theres Arnbom , which was transferred to the Theater Museum in Munich in October 2012 and was on view there until March 2013. In December 2014, the exhibition Porn That Way opened in the Schwules Museum *, which Clarke co-curated and which contained a separate section on the topic of “Music Theater”, where the relationship between opera, operetta and musicals as well as pop music and the porn genre was examined. In 2017 he dedicated himself as curator Siegfried Wagner: Bayreuth's legacy from a box of different colors and examined the relationship between homosexuality and opera as well as of homosexuals during the Nazi era.

Clarke lives in Berlin and the Netherlands. Until 2013 he was responsible for the website “Ralph Benatzky” for the family of the operetta composer.

From March 2011 to January 2013 Kevin Clarke was editor-in-chief of the magazine Männer at Bruno Gmünder Verlag . The same publisher also published his book Porn: From Andy Warhol to X-Tube (2011, ISBN 978-3-86787-098-6 ), which among other things dealt with the similarities between pornography and music theater, a topic that Clarke also deals with dedicated the world of operetta in the catalog for the exhibition and which he pursued in various individual essays (“The Birth of Operetta from the Spirit of Pornography”). His book Beards: An Unshaved History has also been published in a bilingual edition by Gmünder-Verlag . a. there is a larger section on beards in music history (Johann Strauss, Richard Wagner, etc.). In 2015, at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York, he presented his book The Art of Looking: The Life and Treasures of Collector Charles Leslie , which is about the founder of the world's first museum dedicated to gay and lesbian art.

Clarke was also part of various film projects, such as one of the experts in Ralf Pleger s "The Florence Foster Jenkins Story" (2016) and one of the protagonists in Rosa von Praunheim's film opera divas - Operntunten which in 2020 arte was erstausgestrahlt.

Fonts (selection)

author

Essays

• Back to the Future. Aspects of the performance practice of the “White Horse Inn” : In: Ulrich Tadday (Hrsg.): Im White Horse Inn. Between art and commerce (music concepts / NF 133/134). Edition Text + Critique, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-88377-841-9 , pp. 101–150.
• Dangerous poison. The 'authentic' operetta - and what became of it after 1933 . In: Albrecht Dümling (Ed.): The suspicious saxophone. "Degenerate Music" in the Nazi state . Conbrio Verlag, Regensburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-940768-52-0 , pp. 53–69 (+ 1 CD; plus catalog of the exhibition of the same name in the Berlin Philharmonic , November 3 to December 31, 2007) .
• Waltz dreams. Vienna as a setting in stage and sound film operettas before and after 1933 . In: Rainer Rother u. Peter Mänz (Ed.): When I go to my cinema on Sundays. Sound - film - music 1929–1933 . Verlag Kettler, Bönen 2007, ISBN 978-3-939825-75-3 , pp. 106–123 (+ 1 CD; plus catalog of the exhibition of the same name, Deutsche Kinemathek, December 20, 2007 to April 27, 2008).
• The pornography of the operetta. Definitions of an individual form of music theater . In: Danielle Buschinger (Ed.): Erotisme et sexualité. Actes du Colloque international des 5, 6 et 7 mars 2009 à Amiens (Medievales; vol. 47). Université de Picardie, Amiens 2009, ISBN 978-2-901121-61-9 , pp. 315-325.
• “Je suis Barbe-bleue, ô gué! Jamais veuf ne fut plus gai! ”Offenbach's Bluebeard (1866) or: The legend of the murderous knight as a frivolous social grotesque . In: The Tonkunst . Magazine for Classical Music and Musicology , Volume 8 (2014), No. 3 [Subject: Bluebeard], ISSN  1863-3536
• Vera Kálmán . The Csárdásfürstin of the operetta. Ingenious music manager or “veuve abusive”? In: The Tonkunst. Magazine for Classical Music and Musicology , Vol. 8 (2014), No. 4 [Subject: composer's widows ], ISSN  1863-3536
• I'll tear off an eyelash and stab you dead with it! The denazification of the Nazi operetta from 1945 to 2015. In: Musiktheater im Dialog V / Light Muse through the ages (= symposium reports on the research project “Staging of Power and Entertainment” ). State Theater Nuremberg 2016
• The “queer” discographic legacy: gay and lesbian singer stars of the Siegfried Wagner era and Warm Collection Point: Siegfried Wagner and the gay mecca of Berlin. In: Achim Bahr and Peter P. Pachl (eds.): Siegfried Wagner. Bayreuth's legacy from a different colored box. Are Musik Verlag Main 2017, ISBN 978-3-924522-69-8

Books

• together with Marie-Theres Arnbom , Thomas Trabitsch : Welt der Operetta. Glamor, stars and show business . Brandstätter, Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-85033-581-2 (catalog of the exhibition of the same name, Theatermuseum Wien , February 2 to September 24, 2012).
• "The jazz band is already playing in heaven". Emmerich Kálmán and the transatlantic operetta 1928–32 . von Bockel Verlag, Hamburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-932696-70-1 (also dissertation, FU Berlin 2004)
• In the White Horse Inn. On the trail of a world success . Rössl Hotel Verlag, St. Wolfgang 2007, ISBN 978-3-200-01030-7 (+ 1 CD)
• "Holland" in musicals en operettes (AO-Reeks; vol. 2814). Actuele Onderwerpen, Lelystad 2004
• The Art of Looking. The Life and Treasures of Collector Charles Leslie . Gmünder-Verlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-86787-763-3

editor

• Glitter and be gay. The authentic operetta and its gay admirers . Männerschwarm Verlag, Hamburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-939542-13-1 .
• The diaries of Dr. Ralph Benatzky . Between Berlin and Hollywood; a journey back in time to the 20s . Duo-phon Records, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-937127-11-8 (1 CD; audio book)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Danielle Buschinger (Ed.): Erotisme et sexualité . Amiens 2009.
2. ↑ br-online  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ German Musical Archive ( Memento of the original from July 16, 2010 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. 
4. ↑ http://www.queer.de/detail.php?article_id=21969
5. ↑ Glitzlust − not a retirement home
6. ↑ http://www.mpz.bayern.de/mpz-aktuell/sonderausstellungen/deutsches-theatermuseum/welt-der-operette.html
7. ↑ http://www.schwulesmuseum.de/ausstellungen/view/porn-that-way/
8. ↑ Bayreuth relationship boxes . ( tagesspiegel.de [accessed on February 26, 2017]).
9. ↑ - ( Memento of the original from May 23, 2013 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. 
10. ↑ http://www.die-tonkunst.de/index.php/redaktion/lösungen/924/
11. ↑ - ( Memento of the original from September 2, 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. 
12. ↑ The Florence Foster Jenkins Story - SISSYMAG. Retrieved on July 16, 2020 (German). 
13. ↑ program ARD de-ARD Play-Out-Center Potsdam, Potsdam Germany: opera divas - opera tunes. Retrieved July 16, 2020 . 
14. ↑ http://www.die-tonkunst.de/index.php/redaktion/lösungen/924/
15. ↑ http://www.die-tonkunst.de/index.php/verein/aktuelles/oktober-heft-2014-ist-im-druck/
16. ↑ s. a. Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art

Web links

• http://www.operetta-research-center.org
• http://www.fzmw.de/ (article on the performance practice of the operetta, year 2006)
• http://www.ralph-benatzky.com
• http://www.queer.de/detail.php?article_id=21969 (Interview with Kevin Clarke about the Operetta Research Center)