Walther Brügmann

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Walther Brügmann as a young actor at the Städtische Bühnen Leipzig (around 1909)

Walther Brügmann (born August 21, 1884 in Leipzig , † August 25, 1945 in Bern ) was a German actor , singer and director .

Life

The son of a Leipzig merchant attended the Obersekunda of the Königin-Carola-Gymnasium from 1903 to 1904 . He then began training as a bookseller and took acting lessons at the same time. He began his stage career that same year in Leipzig. From 1905 to 1907 he was engaged at the Hoftheater Gera and from 1907 to 1908 at the Städtisches Lortzing-Theater in Münster .

In 1909 he returned to the Städtische Bühnen Leipzig and became assistant to the director Hans Loewenfeld . He made his debut as a director in 1912 with Schiller's Robber on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the Nikolaigymnasium in Leipzig.

From 1912 to 1917 he was director at the Stadttheater Altona under Loewenfeld and then moved to Frankfurt am Main as an actor and chief stage director , where he performed his first operas under the direction of Ernst Lert, who was born in Vienna - including the world premiere of Ernst Krenek's Der Sprung über den Schatten - brought to the stage. From 1922 to 1924 he was senior director of the Frankfurt Municipal Theaters. At the same time, he worked in silent films at that time , among others on the side of Asta Nielsen .

In 1924 he was engaged as opera director at the Leipzig theaters. Here he realized his ideas of modern opera directing and, together with General Music Director Gustav Brecher , opened the venue for modern opera repertoire . Under his direction, several world premieres took place at the New Theater in Leipzig, for example Krenek's Jonny plays or Brecht and Weill's rise and fall of the city of Mahagonny .

In 1933 Brügmann moved to the Bavarian State Theater in Munich as director and a year later to the Theater des Volkes in Berlin , where he performed Lippl's Bavarian folk play The Whitsun Organ with such great success that he was immediately appointed artistic director and senior director. Other productions, such as Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream , Lincke's wife Luna and Ibsen's Peer Gynt as well as Kraft durch Freude - Revue Freut dich des Leben followed before Brügmann was released in 1936 on the basis of denunciation and temporarily imprisoned in February 1937. In 1938 he was finally expelled from the Reichstheaterkammer .

After touring with Richard Tauber across Austria and Italy , Walther Brügmann emigrated to Switzerland .

At the Stadttheater Bern , under the direction of Eugen Keller , he staged the world premieres of Ralph Benatzky's Landrinette and Werner Juker's The Monk's Wedding . In 1939 he was also senior director of the opera in Bern.

Filmography

Fonts

Ernst Krenek: Jonny is playing , cover page of the first edition of the piano reduction
  • The game master and the extra. In: German stage. Yearbook of the Frankfurt Municipal Theaters. Jg. 1, 1917/1918 (1919), ZDB -ID 541588-3 , pp. 327-329.
  • Heretical thoughts from an actor about the opera. In: Leipziger Bühnen-Jahrbuch. 1926, ZDB -ID 275332-7 , pp. 7-16.

Reviews and ratings

His ideal was the 'singer-performer' who was also able to fulfill an operatic role as an actor. The demands also extended to the choir, which should no longer be just living accessories, but should be individually designed. He saw a close coordination of the direction with the set design and the costumes as essential; he often drew for the furnishings himself. Wherever it seemed appropriate to him, he transposed historical material into the present or transformed it into a timeless abstraction; he was resented for this particularly in his Wagner productions. He was overflowing with ideas - which of course sometimes turned out to be a gag -; with particular fondness he made use of the new technical possibilities and used film sequences, for example. Brügmann's secret program was the 'Entoperung der Oper'; his efforts are part of the tendency of the 1920s to enliven the opera on the one hand scenic (representational) and on the other hand - also by interpreting historical material - to open it to the problems of the present.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Johann Hauptmann: Alphabetical index of former Carolaner. In: Twenty-five anniversary of the Queen Carola High School in Leipzig in 1927. Queen Carola High School, Leipzig 1927, p. 21.
  2. ^ Fritz Hennenberg: Brügmann, Walther. In: Music in the past and present. General encyclopedia of music. Person part. Volume 3: Bj - Cal. 2000, col. 1109
personal data
SURNAME Brügmann, Walther
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brügmann, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actor, singer and director
DATE OF BIRTH August 21, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH August 25, 1945
Place of death Bern