Peter Crux

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Peter Crux, lithograph by Ferdinand Wolfgang Flachenecker after a painting by Johann Baptist Seele

Peter Crux (* around 1750 in Mannheim ; † January 31, 1823 in Munich ) was a French dancer and ballet master.

Life

Peter Crux was a son of the weaver Antoine Lecru from Compiègne . His older brother was named Dionys, his sister Marie Catherine. Antoine Lecru immigrated to Mannheim probably because of his professional connections to the theater; his three children, who changed their family name to Crux, embarked on artistic careers: Dionys became an actor, Marie Catherine a dancer and Peter was trained at the ballet planting school. The two young men took their father's first name as their stage name.

At the age of 14, Peter Antoine crux danced in performances of Bouqueton and Lauchery . After Elector Karl Theodor dismissed French theater in 1770, Dionys Crux moved to Metz as director of theater . Peter Crux stayed in Mannheim as the ballet continued and established himself as a court dancer.

On April 15, 1771, he married the dancer Johanna Antonia Habert, and on November 21, 1772, their daughter Marianne was born. Johanna Antonia Crux died after three years of marriage.

In 1778 the ballet moved from Mannheim to Munich. Crux created his first own choreographies such as Apollo and Daphne , Die Liebe Heinrichs IV. Und der Gabriele , Die Arcadian Schäfer and others. But since he felt superfluous as a choreographer in Munich and, moreover, a love affair with Veronika Danner, his dance partner, who was married to the musician Christian Danner, became problematic, Crux accepted the offer in 1779 to become a ballet master and first dancer in his field in Kassel . But he also worked at other theaters and with other dance staff. In 1780 he staged The Love of Heinrich IV. And Gabriele in Berlin . Mozart's Idomeneo brought him back to Munich and to Veronika Danner in 1781, before he went to Vienna that same year . There he choreographed ballet performances for Alceste , Iphigenie auf Tauris and Zemir and Azor and brought out Pyrrhus and Polixene , Progne and Philomele as well as The Village Fair in Alsace .

In autumn 1782 Crux became second ballet master in Munich. In the following years until 1785 no fewer than 22 ballets and five divertissements were performed, including Crux 'ballet The Devil in All Corners . During this time, Veronika Danner's marriage finally broke. Christian Danner gave up his position in the Munich court orchestra and left his wife. On November 22nd, 1785 Crux's Der Erste Schiffer premiered in Munich. The 28-year-old Veronika Danner played Melida, her dance partner was Joseph Petri .

Crux, who was now respected and earned well - among other things, he received bonuses when he foregone guest appearances outside of Munich - spent a lot of time and money raising and training his daughter Marianne. Among other things, he went to Augsburg with the thirteen-year-old to make her a witness to a manned balloon flight. When Marianne Crux was 14 years old, she went on tour with her aunt, Madame Quallenberg, and traveled to Prague with Mozart .

In 1787 and 1788, Peter Crux brought seven new ballet productions to the Munich stage, including The American Wilders and The First Death , in which he danced the Cain. With Orpheus and Eurydice he created a ballet opera in 1789, which was first performed in a private theater in Seefeld before it came to Munich in 1792. In the following years Crux brought the farce Das kleine Hesselohe and Die Toilette der Venus to the stage.

After Munich had been occupied by French revolutionaries in 1796 and Elector Karl Theodor had evaded to Saxony, Crux was able to pursue his wish to give foreign guest performances. He brought out Deukalion and Pyrrha in Berlin . Another area of ​​work was the training of the next generation. Crux became head of the newly founded ballet nursery. In 1799 he brought Paul and Virginie and 1800 Die Zwei Wilden to the stage.

Around this time both the intendant Graf Seeau and the elector, who had both promoted stage dance, died. Now the budget of the ballet was threatened by supporters of the Enlightenment who, in addition to a pure speaking stage, only considered operas to be interesting and worth promoting. The independent ballet act was given up under Marius Babo's acting theater management. The dancers were obliged to take on extra roles. After the opera house on Salvatorplatz was demolished in 1802, further austerity measures were introduced that affected the ballet. Crux, now the sole ballet master, tried to keep the dance theater in Munich alive despite these restrictions. He turned to the elector and showed how well the ballet school had developed. Babo, now the official director, instructed Crux to bring folk or bourgeois topics to the stage as possible, because he expected financial success from them. The village fair was not received too graciously by the criticism in 1800, whereupon Crux defended himself: “Conditions now compel me to do lowly comical ballets [...] I have shown what I am able to do in other kinds of ballets . "

Karl Flerx in The Mechanic

He showed this again in 1804, when the union of dance and music came on stage. This work remained on the program until 1818. Another great success was the painter Teniers . Crux's works were also performed on the stage in the Redoutensaal, where the masked academies were held under Max Joseph IV during the carnival season. In 1806 the mechanic , in which Karl Flerx took on the role of the same name, came on stage. In the same year Bavaria became a kingdom and Peter Crux was honored together with Peter Winter on the occasion of Napoleon's opera visit . In 1806, at the request of the court and against Babo's resistance, he was sent to Paris to look for a new first dancer or a couple, as there had been a gap in the ensemble since the 1803/04 season and the death of Kreszentia Schlittenhart .

Babo resigned in 1810 and his economic advisor Karl August Delamotte took over the position of artistic director. Since the pupils of the ballet school had matured and the financial situation of the ballet was better, Crux could now look a little more hopefully into the future. With Wilhelmine Abel and Antonie Pfeiffer he had two good young dancers from his own house available, Adam Schlotthauer had great success and became a pantomime master. Doctor Faust came on stage in 1808, as did Venus and Endimion in the same year . In 1809 The Graces and The Young Wilde were on the program, as well as The Poet Gessner and Robinson Crusoe . In 1810 Magdalena Decaro from Vienna was engaged in Munich, and a little later Crux had the hope of being able to tie the " flying Duport " and his partner Therese Neumann to Munich.

However, the next low blows soon followed. Zephyr and Flora evidently did not go down well with the public in 1814. Adam Schlotthauer, who was married to a niece Crux ', shot himself in 1813; his successor Jakob Klotz did not achieve the same quality. Karl Flerx, who had worked a lot with Schlotthauer, died in 1816 of an illness.

Peter Crux was to lead the festival for the opening of the new National Theater, which finally opened on October 12, 1818 with The Consecration .

But Crux was looking for a successor towards the end of the 1810s. Among other things, Duport was in conversation, who was again a guest in Munich for two months in 1818 and, among other things, rehearsed The Malevolent Girl . He did not enter into a long-term contract in Munich at the time. In 1819 Filippo Taglioni worked in Munich for five months , but did not receive a contract because they still hoped for Duport's acceptance, and finally decided to work in Vienna. Duport continued to hesitate, and inevitably Crux designed a large part of the program for the 1820 season.

The Feast of the Romans or Thanksgiving was announced as Crux's last work for October 18, 1821 . After 55 years of working in the art of dance, Peter Crux retired. His successor was not Duport, but Friedrich Horschelt . He was deployed in February 1822. A little later, on January 31, 1823, Peter Crux died.

In 1813, after Christian Danner's death, Crux had his long-time lover Veronika Danner, née. Kreßler, married. She outlived him by almost two decades.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Quoted from Pia and Pino Mlakar: Immortal Theater Dance. 300 years of ballet history at the Munich Opera. Volume 1: From the beginning around 1650 to 1860 . Florian Noetzel, Wilhelmshaven 1992, ISBN 3-7959-0524-9 , p. 148.
personal data
SURNAME Crux, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Crux, Peter Antoine; Crux, Peter Anton; Crux, Anton Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German dancer, ballet master and composer
DATE OF BIRTH around 1750
PLACE OF BIRTH Mannheim
DATE OF DEATH January 31, 1823
Place of death Munich