Renato Mordo

Renato Mordo (born August 3, 1894 in Vienna , † November 5, 1955 in Mainz ) was theater director in Oldenburg and co-founder of the state operas in Athens and Ankara .

Vita

Renato Mordo was born as the son of the Corfu merchant Rodolfo Mordo († 1932) and his wife Regina nee. Großmann, who later perished in a concentration camp , was born on August 3, 1894 in Vienna. Both parents were native Jews who converted to Protestantism. Renato Mordo attended high school in Vienna and, at his father's request, was supposed to become a businessman, but he wanted to go to the theater. He studied German , art and music history at the University of Vienna . In addition, he attended the Academy for Music and Performing Arts Vienna from 1914 to 1917 , where he passed the "artistic maturity examination" in 1917. In the same year he published his expressionist volume of poetry Holy Hours . After graduating, he went to the theater in Aussig and was then senior director at the city ​​theater of Katowice for two years .

In August 1920, Renato Mordo was appointed senior director at the State Theater in Oldenburg , in 1921 as director and in 1923 as artistic director. At that time he was the youngest theater director in Germany. His most important achievements in Oldenburg in 1921 were the introduction of the opera at the Landestheater, the modernization of the schedule and the connection of the Low German stage (since 1939 August-Hinrichs-stage ) to the Landestheater. He had the idea of ​​a theater open to all social classes, which, however, met with resistance. Renato Mordo founded the Dramaturgische Blätter of the Oldenburger Landestheater and the small magazine Der Ziehbrunnen in Oldenburg , in which the poet Georg von der Vring (1889–1968) also published. He encouraged the Oldenburg painter Adolf Niesmann (1899–1990) to design stage sets.

On June 17, 1922, Renato Mordo, who converted to Catholicism in 1920, married the actress Gertrude Wessely, the daughter of Hofrat Rudolf Wessely and his wife Helene Schmitt, the daughter of the composer and piano teacher Hans Schmitt . On March 26, 1923, Renato Mordo's only son Peter Rudolf Mordo († March 12, 1985 in Stuttgart) was born in Oldenburg , who later became a composer and program officer at the Stuttgart radio.

In the autumn of 1923 there were arguments in Oldenburg between Renato Mordo, regional music director Julius Kopsch and the theater committee. Internal theater difficulties and disputes over competence led Renato Mordo to insist on the termination of his contract.

After he had left Oldenburg, Renato Mordo was chief director of the theater at the Deutsches Volkstheater in Vienna (1924–1925), director of the theater at the Lobe Theater in Breslau (1925–1926) and at the Dresden Comedy (1926–1928). From 1928 to 1932 he worked as the chief director of opera and drama at the Hessian State Theater in Darmstadt. Then, in view of the deteriorating political situation in the German Empire, he accepted an offer from the German Theater in Prague . There he was senior director of opera, operetta and drama as well as professor at the German Academy for Music and Performing Arts in Prague .

After the German troops marched in, Renato Mordo and his family emigrated to Greece in 1939 . In Athens he founded the State Opera, of which he became director. Here he also promoted the still unknown opera singer Maria Callas . During the occupation of Greece by Italy and the German Empire, he was banned from working and going out. When the persecution of the Jews began in Athens in 1943, he was arrested and taken to the German concentration camp in Haidari near Athens. After the Germans withdrew in September 1944, he was released and allowed to work again. However, after the end of the Greek civil war, he was slandered as a communist and dismissed from the State Opera. Since 1941 he published some comedies and dramas, such as B. the operetta pepper and salt , the music of which his son Peter Rudolf Mordo composed.

In 1947 Renato Mordo was able to hold a successful guest performance at the Vienna State Opera . From 1947 to 1951 he directed the opera in Ankara , where he was also a professor of music and performing arts. In 1951/52 he stayed in Athens again and then completed a six-month guest performance at the Habimah in Tel Aviv. In 1952 he became the chief director of the opera at the Stadttheater Mainz , where he died three years later on November 5, 1955.

Appreciation

Renato Mordo was an artistic innovator who always knew how to design the program progressively. In Oldenburg he introduced opera, in Athens and Ankara he was one of the co-founders of the state operas there. He also performed commendable work at his other places of work, artistically stimulated by Max Reinhardt . If his career had developed unhindered by National Socialism, he would have been guaranteed a great position in the cultural life of Germany.

Renato Mordo was completely apolitical and never a member of any party. He lived exclusively for his theater productions and was completely absorbed in his artistic work.

Works

• Holy hours. Poems. Heidelberg. 1917.
• Pepper and salt (comedy). Basel. 1941.
• Little adventure (comedy). 1944.
• Chaidari (drama). 1945.
• The black phantom. 1946.
• Adam II (comedy). 1947.
• Experienced, listened to, lies (theater anecdotes). 1951.

Published works

• Renato Mordo, Jakob Stöcker, Martin Venzky (eds.): The draw well. Oldenburg papers for theater, literature and fine arts. First issue, March 1921; Second issue, April 1921; Third issue, May 1921; Special issue, May 1921

literature

• Who is who? 12th edition of Degener's Who's it. 1955. p. 611.
• Wilhelm Kosch: German Theater Lexicon. Vol. 2. Klagenfurt. 1960.
• Werner Schuder (Ed.): Kürschner's German Literature Calendar, Nekrolog 1936-1970. Berlin 1973, p. 458 (list of works).
• Karl-Heinz Neumann: Theater in Oldenburg. Oldenburg. 1982.
• Heinrich Schmidt (Hrsg.): Court Theater - State Theater - State Theater. Oldenburg. 1983.
• Christian Krüger: History of the Opera at the State Theater in Oldenburg 1921-1938. Oldenburg. 1984.
• Matthias Struck: Mordo, Renato. In: Hans Friedl u. a. (Ed.): Biographical manual for the history of the state of Oldenburg . Edited on behalf of the Oldenburg landscape. Isensee, Oldenburg 1992, ISBN 3-89442-135-5 , pp. 474-475 ( online ).
• Matthias Struck:  Mordo, Renato. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , p. 91 f. ( Digitized version ).