Word: einem
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Postwar European opera has shown fascinating diversity of subject matter. Trying to put new drama onto their old stages, composers and librettists have turned to Kafka's tales of man in the grip of faceless forces (Gottfried von Einem's The Trial); to religion (Francis Poulenc's The Dialogues of the Carmelites); to intellectual battles of the past (Paul Hindemith's The Harmony of the World, an opera about the astronomer Kepler). Last week two more noteworthy operas held the stage in East Berlin and Naples. Both are by veterans: Slovakian-born Composer Eugen Suchon...
...player. Able Conductor Halasz was sacked in 1951 and replaced by Austrian-born Joseph Rosenstock who staged a world premiere (Copland's The Tender Land) that failed, a New York premiere (Walton's Troilus and Cressida) that succeeded, two gloomy but interesting U.S. stage premieres (Von Einem's The Trial and Bartok's Blue beard's Castle). He did only passably well by standard repertory, and the board of directors could rarely agree on just what kind of opera it wanted...
...long narratives by the prisoners against a background of unnerving orchestral fantasy. Over all hangs an eerie, Kafka-like haze that results partly from the use of exotic folk idiom, partly from acoustical theories that led Janacek to dispense with accepted harmonic transitions. Because of its static quality, Aus Einem Totenhaus has had few performances in the opera house. On records it is the score that counts, and the result is well worth a hearing...
...last year of his life but still at the peak of his powers. Janacek used the Dostoevsky work as the basis of a three-act opera. It had one of its rare performances last summer at the Holland Festival, where it was recorded by Phillips, and last week Aus Einem Totenhaus was released in the U.S. on two Epic...
...second view and, as managing director of the entire New York City Center (opera, ballet, theater), tried to make it work. Through a $200,000 Rockefeller grant, he helped commission such modern operas as Aaron Copland's The Tender Land and the daring stage designs for Von Einem's The Trial, revived such confections as Rossini's Cenerentola. The Center was losing some $100,000 a year, but Kirstein often helped with money fromhis own pocket...