Otto Krüger (choreographer)
Otto Krüger (born April 10, 1913 in Charlottenburg ; † August 3, 2000 in Hilden ) was a German dancer, choreographer, ballet master, founder and head of the dance department of the Hanover Music Academy, later the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media .
Career and life
Born in “1913, the summer of the century” and endowed with the “stamping power of these thirteen”, Krüger began his training as a classical dancer at the former Royal Ballet School at the age of six, which was affiliated with the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden At that time normal school lessons also took place. Victor Gsovsky , Rudolf von Laban and Max Terpis were later his most prominent dance teachers there.
The ballet students took on smaller appearances in opera productions, for example in “ Rosenkavalier ”, in which Krüger was allowed to play “Kleine Mohren”, who quickly lifts a handkerchief from the stage before the curtain falls. As a thank you for this, Richard Strauss (1918–1919 also director of the Berlin State Opera) personally gave him a bar of chocolate - an unforgettable encounter that made a deep impression on him.
Also Harald Kreutzberg , 1924 appointed principal dancer at the Berlin State Opera, was for the young Kruger an important adviser and promoter of his further artistic development. In the years 1928–1931 Otto Krüger had a permanent position at the State Opera. From 1932 to 1934 he was in Paris - as a dancer and for further studies with the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo in the then very famous Mogador Theater under Michail Fokine . After returning to Berlin, he founded a dance studio there. In 1935 the choreographer Tatjana Gsovsky hired him as the first solo dancer at the Städtische Bühnen Essen.
In 1936 he also took over the direction of the ballet and choreographed his first ballet evenings; at the same time he was a dance teacher at the Folkwang School in Essen (1936–1939). There he met the dancer Ursula Fricke, his future wife, with whom he had four children.
Before he had to go to war as a soldier, he was engaged at the Städtische Bühnen Wuppertal (1939–1945). After the war, he went to the Stadttheater Göttingen from 1946 to 1950 (artistic director and general music director Fritz Lehmann). After the entire musical theater and ballet had been terminated there for financial reasons, he ran a “Otto Krüger dance school” in Dortmund-Brackel, the home of his wife.
In 1947 Walter Felsenstein opened his "Komische Oper" in East Berlin with the classic operetta "Die Fledermaus" by Johann Strauss (son) . Otto Krüger took care of the ballet interludes.
1951–1954 he was ballet master at the Landestheater Hannover (artistic director Kurt Ehrhardt). In his role as founder and head of the dance department of the Hanover Music Academy, he brought Gundel Eplinius (1920–2007), a student of Mary Wigman , to the academy as a teacher of free modern dance . After he had stubbornly refused to study the “ Puppenfee ” (music by Josef Bayer ) for artistic reasons , there was a scandal and he left Hanover.
1954–1956 he was at the United Städtische Bühnen Krefeld-Mönchengladbach (director Erich Schumacher), where his daughter was later (1963–1966) also engaged as an actress under the stage name Monika Krug (director Herbert Decker). Here, however, he now had to rehearse interludes in operettas in addition to the usual ballet interludes in various opera productions. This contradicted his high artistic standards just like the “Puppenfee” in Hanover before. On the other hand, in Krefeld he was also allowed to direct. There he staged Christoph Willibald Gluck's opera “ Orpheus and Eurydice ” with great success .
A scandalous event, however, was the rehearsal of Béla Bartók's “ The Wonderful Mandarin ” in the then petty-bourgeois town of Krefeld. The newspapers were outraged by the “shameless” content of the play: It takes place in the red-light district and also shows the murder of a suitor, and the mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer , had the immoral work personally banned from the program in Cologne in 1926 due to strong protests. The theater scandal repeated itself in Krefeld 30 years later and Kruger’s children had difficulties at school because of this - in the prudish 1950s. The Düsseldorf prima ballerina Edel von Rothe danced the “decoy” in this piece ; At that time she was married to Günter Roth, an influential director at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, and Otto Krüger, fortunately for him, was subsequently engaged to Düsseldorf (1956–1959).
An exciting event accompanied by a large press presence was his choreography for the European premiere of Stravinsky's “Agon” on January 27, 1958. Stravinsky had composed the ballet for George Balanchine immediately beforehand , so it was a great challenge for Otto Krüger.
Otto Krüger was a staunch representative of the neoclassical ballet founded by Balanchine. He preferred abstract works as opposed to narrative ballets. "What happens in terms of action arises in the conception entirely from the music itself. The choreography lives from the purely dance element". Rehearsals by contemporary composers such as Stravinsky, Hindemith, Fortner etc. were his strengths.
He also brought the brothers Aloys and Alfons Kontarsky to the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf, where the world premiere of Bernd Alois Zimmermann's “Perspektiven” (music for an imaginary ballet for two pianos) took place in 1957 .
After Düsseldorf (1956–1959) the stages of the city of Essen (1959–1963) were the last station of his work as a choreographer. The Essen director, Erich Schumacher, lured Otto Krüger to Essen with unbelievably good working conditions. In Essen, the world premiere of Wolfgang Fortner's “Mouvements” on February 26, 1960 (ballet version by Otto Krüger and Tatjana Gsovsky) was important. He also staged two operas there, " Orpheus and Eurydice " by Christoph Willibald Gluck and " Madame Butterfly " by Giacomo Puccini .
At the end of the 1960s, he was able to realize his dream of living on the Atlantic and moved into a house in the Algarve - a meeting place for his family for three decades. This time ended in May 2000, when Otto and Ursula Krüger had to be brought back to Germany by rescue helicopter from Portugal for health reasons. Otto Krüger died on August 3, 2000 in Hilden near Düsseldorf.
Works
rehearsed in Göttingen (1946–1950), Hanover (1951–1954), Krefeld (1954–1956), Düsseldorf (1956–1959), Essen (1959–1963):
- The devil in the village , music by Fran Lhotka, libretto Pia and Pino Mlakar (1946/47)
- Nobilissima Visione , music by Paul Hindemith, dance legend in 6 pictures (1948/49)
- The Firebird , ballet in 2 acts, music by Igor Stravinsky, libretto by Michail Fokine (1948/49)
- Petrushka , ballet, music Igor Stravinsky (1951 and 1957)
- Don Juan , ballet, music Christoph Willibald Gluck (1951, 1958, 1962)
- Boulevard Solitude , opera by Hans Werner Henze, lyric drama in 7 images, directed by Walter Jokisch, world premiere (1952)
- The tricorn , ballet, music Manuel de Falla (1952, 1959)
- The white rose , ballet, music Wolfgang Fortner (1952, 1962)
- The wonderful mandarin , ballet, music Béla Bartók (1955)
- Orpheus and Eurydice , opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck (1956, 1960)
- Jeux , ballet, music Claude Debussy (1957)
- Les Demoiselles de la Nuit , ballet, music Jean Français (1957)
- Perspektiven , ballet by Otto Krüger, music by Bernd Alois Zimmermann. First performance (1957)
- Sonata for two pianos and percussion , music by Béla Bartók (1957)
- The wood-carved prince , ballet, music Béla Bartók (1958)
- Agon , ballet, music Igor Stravinsky, European premiere (1958)
- Serenade , ballet by Otto Krüger, music by Julius Weismann. World premiere (1958)
- Symphony in C major , ballet by Otto Krüger, music by George Bizet (1959)
- La Chambre , ballet, music by George Auric, German premiere (1959)
- Divertimento for string orchestra by Béla Bartók (1960)
- Orpheus , ballet, music Igor Stravinsky (1960)
- Mouvements for piano and orchestra by Wolfgang Fortner. First performance (1960)
- Valses nobles et sentimentales and La Valse , choreographic poem for orchestra by Maurice Ravel (1960)
- Bacchantes , ballet, music by George Sicilianos, world premiere (1960)
- Dance suite for orchestra by Béla Bartók (1961)
- The red coat , ballet by Tatjana Gsovsky, music by Luigi Nono (1961)
- Scarlattiana by Alfredo Casella, Divertimento based on music by Domenico Scarlatti (1961)
- Parable , ballet, music Aleida Montijn, world premiere (1962)
- Madame Butterfly , opera by Giacomo Puccini (1962)
- Noche de Luna , pantomime for two dancers, music by Hans Ulrich Engelmann, world premiere (1963)
- Menagerie , ballet in 5 pictures by Tatjana Gsovsky, music by Giselher Klebe (1963)
- Time was fast, ballet, music Aleida Montijn, world premiere (1963)
rehearsed in Essen (1936–1939), Wuppertal (1939–1941), Hanover (1951–1954) and Krefeld (1954–1956):
- Polovtsian dances , ballet, music Alexander Borodin
- Slavic dances , music Antonín Dvořák
- Boléro , ballet, music Maurice Ravel
- Scheherazade , ballet, music Nicolai Rimski-Korsakow
- Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune , ballet, music Claude Debussy
- La Mer , ballet, music Claude Debussy
- Apollon musagète , ballet in 2 pictures, music by Igor Stravinsky
- An American in Paris , ballet, music George Gershwin
- Rhapsody in Blue , ballet, music George Gershwin
literature
- Horst Koegler : Frederick ballet lexicon from A to Z . Friedrich Verlag, Velber near Hannover 1972, p. 324
Individual evidence
- ↑ Florian Illies : 1913: The summer of the century . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2012, ISBN 978-3-10-036801-0 ., P. [Xxx].
- ^ DOR, 50 Years of Music Theater, Deutsche Oper am Rhein, 1956-2006. Deutsche Oper am Rhein and DuMont literature and art publishing house. 2006, p. 49
- ^ Horst Koegler: Friedrichs Ballettlexikon from A to Z , Friedrich Verlag, Velber bei Hannover 1972, p. 33f.
- ↑ “Interview about the ballet. A conversation with Otto Krüger ”, in: Music and Scene. Theater magazine of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, 3rd year, 1958/59, issue 9, pp. 64–67.
Remarks
- ↑ Photographed by his brother Kurt Krüger, who ran a well-known photo studio for the press, stage and film in Munich in the 1940s and 1950s
- ↑ First performance on December 11, 1957 in Los Angeles
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Kruger, Otto |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German dancer, choreographer and ballet master |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 10, 1913 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Charlottenburg |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 3, 2000 |
| Place of death | Hilden |