Berlin Opera Culture 1925-1944

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Arne Stollberg
• Subject Area: Musicology
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 538820430

The project (in cooperation with the Staatsoper and the Deutsche Oper Berlin) aims to provide an overall account of the Berlin opera landscape between 1925 and 1944, which has been lacking up to now. Its interconnections with political, intellectual and literary discussions are to be brought into focus, as are the competitions and synergies between the opera houses. In addition, the (self-)positioning of the institutions in the midst of a rapid development in the history of media, which represented both an opportunity and a danger for performative stage art, will be examined. The performance venues are understood as music-theatrical spaces of action that operate with each other, sometimes against each other, and are each in relation to the intellectual environment in Berlin. They thus appear as part of a systemic context that can only be illuminated through a holistic perspective on Berlin music theatre in the period under investigation. This period of investigation results from a combination of institution-historical and political incisions. It extends from the end of Max von Schilling's directorship of the Staatsoper and the simultaneous takeover of the Charlottenburg Opera House by the City of Berlin to the cessation of performances in the course of the "total war". Important phases such as the Klemperer era of the Kroll Opera (1927-1931) and the caesura of 1933 are thus included in order to be able to trace changes and continuities between the Weimar Republic and the Nazi dictatorship. The project is divided into four sub-projects. Sub-project I (Postdoc) develops the aforementioned holistic perspective by 1) reconstructing the relationships of competition and cooperation between the Berlin opera houses, 2) discussing their relationship to the new technologies of record, radio and (sound) film, and 3) investigating the discursive position of opera in the political debates of the time. Sub-project II (PhD) does groundwork by making visible the activities of opera venues beyond the big houses, which have received little attention so far. This includes music theatre performances in other institutions, for example Max Reinhardt’s Großes Schauspielhaus, but also the Volksoper, which was installed at the end of 1935, and, in oppressive contrast, the theatre of the "Kulturbund Deutscher Juden". Sub-project III is the creation of a database for Berlin opera premieres 1925-1944, including the bibliographic documentation of all reviews in the Berlin daily press and the provision of selected full texts. Sub-project IV is dedicated to the case study of the composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, whose works were performed at the Staatsoper as well as the Städtische Oper and who was simultaneously active as an arranger of operettas at other theatres in Berlin, e. g. for Max Reinhardt, so that all aspects of the planned project appear bundled in his work.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants