From today to tomorrow

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Opera dates
Title: From today to tomorrow
Title page of the score, Berlin 1929

Title page of the score, Berlin 1929

Shape: Opera in one act
Original language: German
Music: Arnold Schoenberg
Libretto : "Max Blonda" (Gertrud Schönberg)
Premiere: February 1, 1930
Place of premiere: Frankfurt Opera House
Playing time: Around 1 hour
Place and time of the action: Modern living room in a German city, present
people

From one day to the next there is an opera in one act by Arnold Schönberg with a libretto by “Max Blonda” (Gertrud Schönberg). It is the first twelve-tone opera . The world premiere took place on February 1, 1930 in the Frankfurt Opera House .

action

The opera is set in a modern living room with built-in cupboards and pull-out beds. A sliding glass door in the background leads to a porch and garden. The wife and husband come home from a party late at night. The man raves about his wife's girlfriend, whom they met again after years. He longs for a change from everyday monotony. The wife points out his own achievements: a beautiful home, a child and a wife who loves him. In contrast to her, the friend never had to take care of family or household and that was the only reason why she stayed so fresh; Even in her childhood she played tricks for which she was punished even then. On the other hand, she liked this singer very much at the festival, who courted her in an entertaining way. Gradually the conversation turns into a solid argument. Both decide to prove to their partner that they know how to live differently. Her current way of life, which is shaped by habits, has only shown consideration for her partner. That is over now.

The woman immediately begins her transformation, initially unnoticed by the man. She says that she wants to put on make-up, dye her hair and only wear the finest clothes, and of course she wants to get a lot of lovers. The man is unimpressed. But then the woman turns on the light and appears completely different in an effective costume. The man is fascinated and immediately wants to prove his newly inflamed love to her. But she rejects him. She now wants to enjoy life and immediately start an affair with the singer. Their behavior in the house also changes. She orders her husband around, tries to make him jealous and torment him. She throws a beer bottle that he fetches for her from the cellar on the floor, causing it to break. She sings and dances and wakes the child who comes out of his room to check on the noise. She roughly pushes it away, leaving her husband to comfort it and get it back to bed. When the gas man rings the doorbell to ask for the bill, she wants to send him away without payment. She now needs all the money for clothes and wants to live on credit like all decent people in the future.

The singer calls. He went past her apartment with his friend and they saw a light through the blinds. He was of the opinion that it was due to her bright eyes, but the friend said it was just electric light. Whoever is wrong, that is, loses the bet, has to invite the man and the woman to the bar. The woman decides "Solomonic": the girlfriend should invite her husband and the singer herself.

The man who overheard the phone conversation realizes more and more how much he misses his faithful housewife. He asks her to get back to what she was before. The woman explains that it was all just a game - although she herself feared it could become serious as she was swept away from the role. She shows the man the gas bill that has already been paid and explains that the expensive clothes really belong to her sister.

When the girlfriend and the singer walk in, they find a peaceful marriage idyll. They are disappointed that nothing will come of the flirtation they had hoped for - the man and the woman are probably not leading a “modern” marriage. After they have left, the man, the woman and the child sit down at the breakfast table, and the woman sums up: As theater characters, they may have faded while the others are still shining in colors - but with them, fashion rules, with them even love. This does not change "overnight". Finally, the child asks curiously what “modern people” are.

layout

After Expectation and The Happy Hand (both 1924), Von heute auf Morgen is Schönberg's third music-theatrical work and the first that he explicitly referred to as an opera. In contrast to the two earlier works, this time he intended to write a cheerful piece. He himself wrote: "It is a cheerful to amusing, sometimes even (I hope at least) comic opera". Like Krenek's Jonny plays or Weill's Threepenny Opera , it belongs to the type of “Zeitoper” or “Opera domestica” in the sense of New Objectivity . His opera should be "not grotesque, not offensive, not political, not religious". The text appears constructed and simple, but also gains truthfulness through everyday language.

From one day to the next is considered the first twelve-tone opera . However, this only affects the sound level. The rhythmic and formal structures correspond to tradition. The music is composed through. It contains recitative and arioso passages. The final quartet uses strict contrapuntal procedures. There are also various parodic elements such as waltz bars, Wagner quotes and jazz rhythms.

It was often criticized that the strict composition did not go with the easy conversation piece. Ulrich Schreiber noted for example that "the text on proliferating sphere trivial everydayness is alienated by the music on striking way," and the work quite positive opposite composer Hanns Eisler said, "Schoenberg wanted to write a jaunty opera, but by the peculiarity of his method of composition and the material handling has produced a kind of family-scale apocalypse ”. Hanspeter Krellmann , on the other hand, pointed out that with Schönberg "the idea dictates the style, not the style the idea". An appropriation of popular elements, e.g. B. Jazz or Music Hall , as u. a. Kurt Weill or Ernst Krenek did in their works would have contradicted "Schönberg's deeply pronounced need for originality as a composer". The comedy of the piece is not superficially spread over the music, but worked into the sound structure. This even applies to the musical quotations it contains, such as a phrase from Puccini's Manon Lescaut , which can hardly be recognized.

Despite the twelve-tone technique, Schönberg attached great importance to cantability . The singers should neither scream nor destroy the beauty of the notes by exaggerated characterizations. Nor should they strive to make the audience laugh. The tone should be light, but not obscure the moral.

The twelve-tone row on which the work is based contains two tritone intervals:

{\ set Score.tempoHideNote = ## t \ tempo 1 = 72 \ omit Staff.TimeSignature \ time 12/1 d''1 ees '' a 'cis' 'b' f 'aes' g 'e' 'c' 'bes' fis'}

Instrumentation

The orchestral line-up for the opera includes the following instruments:

Work history

The libretto for From Today to Tomorrow comes from Arnold Schönberg's wife Gertrud, who appears here under the pseudonym “Max Blonda”. Presumably, the two of them conceived the text when they were on the Riviera in autumn 1928. Arnold Schönberg had already started a libretto of the same name that was about a marital dispute. His wife's text takes some of the concepts from it, but tells a completely different story. She received further inspiration from Richard Strauss' comedy Intermezzo . Contrary to some suspicions, the plot does not contain any autobiographical features. It is more likely to be inspired by the marriage of Schönberg's composer colleague Franz Schreker .

Schönberg wrote the composition between October 25, 1928 and January 1, 1929. He completed the score on August 3, 1929, and the piano reduction on September 30. Since he was counting on an audience success, he decided to publish it himself. But in a letter to Universal Edition , without giving details, he dropped references to a new “comic opera”. As a result, in March 1929, the conductor Erich Kleiber showed interest in the work that he wanted to perform at the Berlin State Opera . However, Schoenberg refused a corresponding request by Alban Berg with reference to his contractual relationship with Otto Klemperer . Further negotiations with Paul Bekker , the artistic director of the Wiesbaden theater as well as Universal Edition and the Schott publishing house also failed before the Frankfurt artistic director Josef Turnau agreed to the premiere.

Else Gentner-Fischer (wife), Benno Ziegler (husband), Elisabeth Friedrich (girlfriend) and Anton Maria Topitz (singer) sang at the premiere on February 1, 1930 in the Frankfurt Opera House . William Steinberg was the musical director . Herbert Graf directed it . The set was designed by Ludwig Sievert . The game took place close to the audience on a podium in the orchestra room. Schönberg's opera was combined with the Pergolesi - Pasticcio Il maestro di musica by Pietro Auletta (Paris 1752, adaptation of his opera Orazio from 1737), performed in German. The public reaction was mixed. Schönberg's supporters cheered the performance. These in turn were severely attacked by his opponents. The Harenberg opera guide writes of a "tangible theater scandal". According to Karl Holl's report in the Frankfurter Zeitung , however, the majority of those present only reacted with "respectful silence".

The audience success that Schönberg had hoped for was not achieved, and the second performance at Funk-Hour Berlin in 1930 was only given as a concert. This was directed by Schönberg himself. The main roles were sung by Margot Hinnenberg-Lefèbre and Gerhard Pechner . The work was not performed during the Nazi era. Only in 1952 was there a new production in Naples under the direction of Hermann Scherchen and directed by Willi Reich (husband: Willy Heyer-Krämer, wife: Lydia Stix). This was followed by performances at the Holland Festival Amsterdam in 1958 (director: Hans Rosbaud ), in Hanover in 1963 (director: Günther Wich ), at the Theater an der Wien in 1965 (director: Friedrich Cerha ), in the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées Paris 1967, in Frankfurt 1973 (concert performance), in Santa Fe (New Mexico) 1980 and in Freiburg im Breisgau 1988. In 1997 a convincing black and white film was made by the artist couple Straub-Huillet under the musical direction of Michael Gielen (conductor). In 1999 the one-act play was given together with Elliott Carter's What Next under the direction of Daniel Barenboim at the Berlin State Opera. The video recording of a Lyon production from 2012 was broadcast on the Internet in 2016 as part of the Opera Platform .

Recordings

Web links

Commons : overnight  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wulf Konold : From one day to the next. In: Rudolf Kloiber , Wulf Konold, Robert Maschka: Handbuch der Oper. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag / Bärenreiter, 9th, expanded, revised edition 2002, ISBN 3-423-32526-7 , pp. 664–665.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Hanspeter Krellmann: Arnold Schönberg. In: Udo Bermbach (Ed.): Opera in the 20th century. Development tendencies and composers. Metzler, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-476-01733-8 , pp. 418-420.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h Gerlinde Obermaier: From one day to the next. In: Piper's Encyclopedia of Musical Theater. Volume 5: Works. Piccinni - Spontini. Piper, Munich and Zurich 1994, ISBN 3-492-02415-7 , pp. 614-615.
  4. ^ A b Siegfried Mauser : From the expressionist one-act play to the great opera: the music theater of the Vienna School. In: Silke Leopold (Ed.): Music theater in the 20th century (= history of the opera. Volume 4). Laaber, 2006, ISBN 3-89007-661-0 , pp. 165-167.
  5. ↑ Quotations from Arnold Schönberg, Briefe, selected and ed. by Erwin Stein. Mainz 1958, p. 142. Quoted from Udo Bermbach (Hrsg.): Oper im 20. Jahrhundert. Development tendencies and composers. Metzler, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-476-01733-8 , p. 418.
  6. ↑ a b c d From one day to the next. In: Harenberg opera guide. 4th edition. Meyers Lexikonverlag, 2003, ISBN 3-411-76107-5 , pp. 814, 817-818
  7. ↑ a b c Ulrich Schreiber : Opera guide for advanced learners. The 20th Century I. From Verdi and Wagner to Fascism. Bärenreiter, Kassel 2000, ISBN 3-7618-1436-4 , pp. 485-487.
  8. ↑ a b c d e O.W. Neighbor:  overnight. In: Grove Music Online (English; subscription required).
  9. ^ Tone sequence based on the text book of a performance at the Teatro La Fenice (Italian, PDF) , p. 41, accessed on November 5, 2016.
  10. ↑ a b Schönberg - From today to tomorrow on The Opera Platform ( Memento from March 14, 2017 in the Internet Archive ).
  11. ^ A b c Arnold (Franz Walter) Schönberg. In: Andreas Ommer: Directory of all opera complete recordings. Zeno.org , volume 20.
  12. ^ From today to tomorrow, by Arnold Schoenberg at the Opéra de Lyon ( Memento of November 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) on Mezzo TV , accessed on November 2, 2016.