Singspielhalle
The Singspielhalle is a variant of the variety show and the German-language equivalent of Music Hall and Vaudeville Theater, i.e. of currents in evening entertainment that originated in London and Paris and had their commercial climax in the USA.
The Singspielhalle emerged from the folk singer scene in the course of urbanization in Vienna from the middle of the 19th century and became a performance location for mixed entertainment programs. In contrast to the Varieté, which was also represented in Vienna, artistic and acrobatic performances were not provided. There were singing arcades in many cities in the German-speaking area. Well-known artists such as Karl Valentin or Armin Berg have emerged from them.
Definition and demarcation
In contrast to the London, Paris and New York models, the Singspielhallen were often devoted to a petty bourgeois variant of the operetta , but also to cabaret and other variants of cabaret . Central items on the program were singing, dancing and acting " numbers ". Folk, couplet and Wienerlied singers performed, folk plays , antics and burlesques were performed.
Although the Singspielhallen were a modern metropolitan phenomenon, they were often seen as bastions of the apparently old and traditional (see “ Old Vienna ”). For example yodelling was invented for this purpose, which was originally “a matter for the townspeople”.
The audience in the Singspielhalle was the lower class of society, who could not afford theater or opera performances. In 1867, for example, entry to the Chantant (after Café chantant , a predecessor of the Varieté in Vienna) Schreindorfers-Glas-Salon cost 40 Kreuzer, while the Theater an der Wien charged four guilders , i.e. ten times as much.
Despite the word " hall " in the name, the Singspielhalle was mostly housed in ordinary city buildings. Only in the Prater was the term Halle sometimes to be understood literally.
history
The Singspielhalle was particularly common in the Vienna area, with a center in the Prater . At first it served primarily as a performance venue for folk singers , small theater troupes and comedians. Folk singers were the stars and often founders of singing arcades. They gave solo lectures, had folk plays performed and singspiels for the best. The Singspielhalle thus became the “opera of the little man” - “something in between the theater and the folk singer stage”. It spread rapidly in the suburbs of Vienna (which were not incorporated into the suburbs until a few years later ), and the program developed into a colorful mix of contemporary entertainment culture. Around 1900 there were over a hundred such stages in the Vienna area. Singspielhallen were also opened in other cities such as Munich , Berlin and Frankfurt am Main .
The first Vienna Singspielhalle was opened in Hernals in 1860 ("Ungers Casino"). Johann Fürst's Singspielhalle has been one of the largest Singspielhallen in the Prater since 1861. The Viennese Singspielhalle had a lively exchange, especially among comedians, with Budapest, which at the time of Austria-Hungary was still over forty percent German-speaking . The best-known example of this is the Budapest Orpheum , founded in 1889, which was founded in Vienna and initially consisted exclusively of Budapesters. Many music halls developed into cabaret theaters and cabarets , and from the turn of the century frequently to the cinema . Gustav Münstedt's large Singspielhalle, also located in the Prater, was converted into one of the first cinemas in Vienna in 1902. In the 1920s -Jahren it became the Münstedt Kinopalast from Fürst music hall was the comedy movie . Many other Singspielhallen met the same fate until around 1930, when cinema rose to become the new medium of mass entertainment.
Legal restrictions
In order to run a musical hall, you needed a license in Vienna . A singspielhalle in the sense of the concession was not a spatial facility, but a company that was entitled “ to perform one-act singing games, antics and burlesques with singing, as well as individual recitals and solo scenes ”. For the performances of a “Singspielhalle” the concessionaire needed a “ restoration or tavern location ”. The operator of the Singspielhalle had to rent a restaurant or tavern for every performance. If the concessionaire wanted to set up his own performance venue, he therefore needed a pub concession. Many performance venues, which were known as Singspielhallen, were therefore ordinary restaurants, inns or often also hotels in which more or less regular Singspielhalle performances took place.
The concession put restrictions on the size of the performances in order not to compete with the theater. The actors of the folk plays and antics were not allowed to wear costumes, the stages were not allowed to have recesses , the backdrops and decorations were not changed during a performance and no stage machinery was used. At least the costume ban was abolished after protests.
Despite the legal restrictions, some of the Singspielhallen developed into theaters in which, in addition to singing and cabaret performances, folk plays and multi-act pieces (from a legal point of view: several one-act plays in a row) were performed. From a legal point of view, however, they were not theaters, although some theaters called themselves that: for example the Fürst Theater in Vienna's Prater . The composers of the Singspiele such as Karl Kleiber or Carl Ferdinand Konradin have not been able to assert themselves in the history of Viennese operetta , which from today's perspective only took place in the expensive Viennese suburban theaters.
literature
- Georg Wacks: Excursus: The Singspielhall concession. In: Georg Wacks: The Budapest Orpheum Society. A vaudeville theater in Vienna 1889–1919. Verlag Holzhausen, Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-85493-054-2 , pp. 13-15
- Anon .: Das Harmonietheater (= contributions to local history of the IX. District. No. 1), Vienna 1966
- Josef Koller: The Viennese folk singing in old and new times , Vienna: Gerlach & Wiedling 1931
Individual evidence
- ^ Max P. Baumann: Music Folklore and Music Folklorism. A music-ethnological study on the functional change in yodelling , Winterthur 1976, p. 234
- ^ Wacks, p. 13
- ^ Otto Bauer: Operas and Operettas in Vienna , Graz 1955, see the plan in the appendix
- ↑ a b c provisions of the Council of Ministers Presidential Decree of December 31, 1867. In: Wacks, p. 13f