Silesian Opera
The Silesian Opera (Polish: Opera Śląska ) is an opera ensemble in Bytom , Silesia , Poland , which was founded in 1945 in the former municipal theater of Bytom in Upper Silesia .
prehistory
The history of the theater in the city of Bytom in Upper Silesia, which can be documented, goes back to the early decades of the 19th century. Today's house is only around 110 years old. In 1900 a so-called "Konzerthausgesellschaft" was founded, which was a private association of the citizens of Beuthen - namely the culturally devoted director of the Oberschlesische Bank, Franz Landsberger (1853–1925) - and intended to incorporate both the theater and the concert system in the city to promote appropriate building. The Berlin architect Alexander Böhm was commissioned with the design of the building; the construction company Konrad Segnitz from Beuthen was responsible for the execution.
Upper Silesian State Theater
The building site, a site between Kaiserplatz and Gymnasialstraße, which had already been used for circus presentations, was made available by the city free of charge. The citizens and in particular several large industrialists raised the capital to make the construction possible. The opening took place on October 1, 1901 with Beethoven's overture The Consecration of the House and a prologue given by the director at the time, Hans Knapp. An allegorical homage from Upper Silesia to art was then staged in a “living image”. Only then did Schiller's Maiden of Orleans perform . A few days later the concert hall, which is attached to the theater building, opened.
At first there were primarily plays and operettas in the theater. From 1905 (and initially only until 1908), Knapp also offered opera performances to his audience, which had to be performed with an orchestra of 38 musicians and a choir of 20 singers, with the Beuthener Singverein joining in for large choir operas. So they played a representative selection of all opera genres that were common in the German-speaking area at the time, including works by the composers Bizet , Boieldieu , Flotow , JF Halévy , C. Kreutzer , Lortzing , Maillart , Mascagni , Méhul , Meyerbeer , Mozart , Neßler , Offenbach , Rossini , A. Thomas , Verdi , R. Wagner , CM v. Weber . Afterwards, Knapp was initially only able to have a so-called “monthly opera” performed by guest ensembles. Even during the war seasons, plays and operettas were offered, and operas began again in 1916 (Lortzing's armourer , Weber's Freischütz and Humperdinck's royal children ). In 1921 the Volksoper Vienna gave its first guest performance .
In April 1923 the first plans were made to merge the opera houses of Beuthen, Gleiwitz and Hindenburg (Zabrze in Poland). This project was then implemented with the “three-city theater” and several other cooperation models. On September 27, 1924, the first opera was played with Fidelio under the new artistic director of Hubert Reusch from Berlin, and now this successful period of the Beuthen city theater in the city union (under the title "United Municipal Theaters") lasted, albeit under the new artistic director Mannheim, Eugen Felber and others, uninterrupted until 1944. As early as 1925 there was a guest performance by a Polish ensemble, the Katowice Opera , with the opera Mazeppa by Adam Münchheimer (yidd .: Minchejmer, 1830–1904), a student of Adolf Bernhard Marx , but this ensemble also came to Beuthen with more well-known works.
From 1925, the young actor and later director of the Komische Oper Berlin , Walter Felsenstein , was engaged at the Beuthener Stadttheater , who first tried his hand as an opera director here, with Puccini's La Bohème and Max von Schillings ' Mona Lisa .
In 1926, the overall guest performance of the Vienna Volksoper brought about the first encounter with Wagner's oeuvre, which was played in Bayreuth, not just for Beuthen but for the entire region. The Ring of the Nibelung was first performed in Beuthen. Then there were first performances of operas by Verdi, Eugen d'Alberts , Brandts-Buys , Hans Pfitzner and Bizets. From 1927 the deputy chairman of the German Stage Association , Arthur Illing . In 1929 contemporary opera was also taken into account: operas by Paul Hindemith , Ernst Krenek and Kurt Weill were performed, among others .
The prosperous cooperation of the Polish and German ensembles was then torpedoed by radicalized German-national youths who disrupted the performance of the Katowice ensemble in Opole with stink bombs, which was condemned in the strongest terms by both the German and Polish press. After that, however, the German ensembles were no longer allowed to play on the Polish stages in Upper Silesia. Then there was a judicial investigation and clear legal regulations for the respective guest performances, which were allowed in special proportions.
The following seasons again featured some rarities, including Verdi's early Opera buffa Un giorno di regno , Kienzl's Evangelimann , Janáček's Jenůfa and even an operetta premiere (by the composer Hermann Falk). The Habimah Theater gave an overall guest performance with the Dybuk by Salomon An-ski . The new musical boss, Erich Peter , planned his own Wagnerian Ring , but many bold plans were thwarted by the National Socialists and Illing could not hold on as director.
But even after 1933 there was a varied program in Beuthen with numerous premieres, including works by Paul Graener and Rudolf Wagner-Régeny , Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari , Franz Schmidt and Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek . In 1940 Franz Wödl's opera Die Komödie der Errungen based on Shakespeare premiered. The special works that were given also included Ottmar Gerster's Enoch Arden , Lortzing's Hans Sachs , Alexander Ecklebe's Das Buch der Liebe ( premier 1942), Cesar Bresgen's The Cunning Miller and, at the end of 1943, the first performance of a new version of ETA Hoffmann's Aurora (text edit. Bayer / Lange, musical version: Lukas Böttcher). On July 2, 1944, the last performance of the German-speaking ensemble took place in this theater, Lehár's operetta Der Graf von Luxemburg . Afterwards there were only guest appearances before the declaration of “total war”.
Opera Śląska
The world-famous bass player Adam Didur , who had previously worked at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City , was the first artistic director in the house's Polish period from 1945. As the opening performance of his directorship, Moniuszko's "National Opera" was premiered on June 14, 1945 Halka in Polish. A large part of the ensemble was recruited from the former Polish opera in Lwow ( Lemberg ). The house has again been known as an ensemble of the highest order and talent factory for singers and dancers in Poland and abroad. Appearances abroad took place in Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and, as the first Polish stage, in the USA and Canada. Singers Bogdan Paprocki , Romuald Tesarowicz , Anna Lorenz , Jolanta Wrożyna and Wiesław Ochman (who also worked here as a director) made their debut in Bytom .
Moniuszko's haunted castle and all the works of Szymanowski , Różycki , Rudziński , Matlakiewicz , Świder , Twardowski and Baird were presented here.
In 2005, a new, smaller concert hall named after Adam Didur with 176 seats was opened in the opera building. Chamber events, small forms of music, symphony concerts, anniversary events and more take place here.
The current repertoire includes 33 operas. Main conductor, artistic director and general music director is Tadeusz Serafin .
literature
- Erich Peter: History of the Upper Silesian State Theater and State Orchestra in Beuthen OS. A documentation report . Dortmund 1972.
- Edgar Makosch: On the history of the city theater bytom in Upper Silesia (1901 to 1944) dates - events - names . Private printing Essen 2002.
- Tadeusz Kijonka (Ed.): Pół wieku Opery Śląskiej. Księga jubileuszowa Teatru z lat 1945–2000 [50 years of the Silesian Opera 1945–2000] . Bytom 2002.
Web links
- Opera Śląska (Silesian Opera)
- Leon Markiewicz: Opera in Upper Silesia in the first half of the 20th century (PDF)
- Karol Bula: The repertoire of the Silesian State Opera from a socio-cultural aspect (PDF)
Coordinates: 50 ° 20 ′ 38.6 ″ N , 18 ° 55 ′ 16.2 ″ E