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On the Politics of Performing Wagner Outdoors: Open-Air Opera, Gesamtkunstwerk and the Third Reich’s ‘Forest Opera’, 1933–45
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2021
Abstract
This article explores the politics of performing Wagner outdoors, focusing on the Waldoper in Sopot, Poland, and its operations under the Third Reich. Festival literature suggests that the Reich combined climatic deterministic logic with established open-air theatrical practice to implicate experiencing Wagnerian sounds outdoors as inculcating völkisch character in Poles, positioning the festival within the Reich’s imperial mission. However, this vision from ‘on high’ was undermined by bureaucratic disorganization and inefficiency, much like other Nazi artistic projects. The article concludes with a discussion of the post-war afterlives of the Waldoper and its attendant mythologies.
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- © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Royal Musical Association
Footnotes
I wish to thank James Q. Davies, Gundula Kreuzer and Mary Ann Smart for reading and offering stimulating feedback on earlier drafts of this essay; the archivists and librarians at the Muzeum Sopotu and the Freie Universität Berlin for providing archival documents essential to this research; and Freya Jarman and two anonymous readers for their insightful suggestions and reviews. An earlier version of this article was awarded the 2018 Ingolf Dahl Memorial Prize from the American Musicological Society’s Northern California and Pacific Southwest chapters, and its completion was facilitated by the American Musicological Society’s Eugene K. Wolf Grant. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted.
References
1 ‘Der Kanzler ist auf dem Danziger Flugplatz gelandet!’; ‘Hitler kommt zur Waldoper! Der Führer besucht heute abend die Waldoper!’; ‘halb nichts’; ‘Das Gerücht war einmal da und wurde geglaubt. Ja, es span sich fort und nahm ganz bestimmte Formen an.’ Meyer, Friedrich Albert, ‘Als der Führer in der Waldoper erwartet wurde’, Die Zoppoter Waldoper: Ein Weg zum neuen deutschen Theater, ed. Meyer (Berlin: Schlieffen, 1934), 35–8Google Scholar (p. 35). It is not clear who Meyer was or why he was editing collections of essays on the Waldoper.
2 Meyer, Friedrich Albert, Die Zoppoter Waldoper: Ein kleiner Führer für die reichswichtige Festspielstätte (Sopot: Verlag Zoppoter Waldoper, 1939)Google Scholar. For transcripts of the contents pages of both of Meyer’s volumes, see Appendix.
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16 Luther, Die Zoppoter Waldoper, 21. Waldoper repertoire between 1909 and 1915 and between 1919 and 1944 is listed ibid., 351–89; there were no performances in 1916–18 or in 1945–59. It included Conradin Kreuzer, Das Nachtlager von Grenada (1909); Wagner, Tannhäuser (1910); Ignaz Brüll, Das goldene Kreuz (1910–11); Smetana, Die verkaufte Braut, and Humperdinck, Hänsel und Gretel (1912); Strauss, Die Zigeunerbaron (1913); Weber, Der Freischütz (1914); Hofmannsthal, Jedermann (1915); Ludwig Anzengruber, Die Kreuzelschreiber, and Ernst Hardt, Tantris der Narr (1919); Clemens Schmalstich, Tänze (1920); and Beethoven, Fidelio (1921). Only Wagner was performed on the main stage between 1922 and 1944, with the exception of rare performances of Beethoven’s Fidelio and Eugen d’Albert’s Tiefland.
17 Luther, Die Zoppoter Waldoper, 21.
18 The Deutsches Bühnen Jahrbuch, 51 (Berlin: Günther & Sohn, 1940) lists open-air stages in many German, Polish and Austrian cities, including Bad Dürkheim, Berlin (Spandau Zitadelle), Castrop-Rauxel, Danzig (associated with the Landestheater Saarpfalz), Eisfeld, Essen (associated with a summer festival), Forst, Frankfurt (the Römberg), Gehren, Gelnhausen, Graz, Hamburg, Hanover (associated with the Herrenhäuser Garten), Heidelberg (associated with the Heidelberger Schloß), Leipzig, Lübeck (associated with the Staatstheater), Lünen (associated with Schloß Buddenburg), Mainau (associated with the Staatstheater Konstanz), Oybin (associated with a Kurort and summer festival), Paderborn (associated with the summer festival ‘Auf der Paderinsel’), Pforzheim, Rathen (associated with a Kurort and a summer festival), Solingen, Tecklenburg, Vienna, Wattenscheid (associated with a summer festival), Weißenberg and Württemberg.
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21 Lists of open-air stages and the theatres, summer festivals and/or resorts with which they were associated can be found in the Deutscher Bäder Kalendar (Berlin: Bäder- und Verkehrs-Verlag, 1931) and in issues of the Deutsches Bühnen Jahrbuch.
22 Deutscher Bäder Kalendar, 288.
23 Mettin, ‘Theater im Natur’, 498–9. Other categories of stage include Bergbühne, Bergtheater, Freilichtspiele, Freilichttheater, Freilufttheater, Gartenbühne, Marktbühne, Naturbühne, Schloßbühne, Strandbühne, Waldoper and Waldtheater. Additional categories of stages are listed ibid. and in Rudolf Meyer, Hecken- und Gartentheater in Deutschland im XVII. und XVIII. Jahrhundert (Emsdetten: Lechte, 1934), which also provides a longer bibliography on Hecken- and Gartentheater. Mettin reports that repertoire at open-air stages included (at the Harzer Bergtheater) Shakespeare (Ernst Leopold Stahl, ‘Shakespeare auf der Naturbühne’, Jahrbuch für Deutschen Shakespeare Gesellschaft, 44 (1903), 239–43 (p. 239)); (at the Elbinger Waldoper) Gluck’s Orfeo, Kreuzer’s Das Nachtlager in Granada and Weber’s Der Freischütz (Deutsches Bühnen Jahrbuch, 26 (Berlin: Günther & Sohn, 1915), 397); and (at the Essener Waldoper) Hans Joachim von Loeschenbrand-Horn’s Rheinland, Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Weber’s Der Freischütz (Die Musik, 27 (1934), 184, 867).
24 Mettin, ‘Theater im Natur’, 499.
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43 ‘Sie […] wuchs über all diese Aufgaben hinaus zu einer deutschen Mission im Ostraum, als neue Grenzen nach dem Krieg in die Landkarte eingezeichnet wurden.’ Friedrich Albert Meyer, ‘Die Zoppoter Waldoper’, Die Zoppoter Waldoper, ed. Meyer (1939), 4–7 (p. 5).
44 ‘Der Wald der Germanen ist ein Welt der Wunder, in ihm finden wir die Wurzeln der Kraft der Germanen. Wer erzählen will von den alten germanischen Recken, von ihrem Leben und ihrem Glauben, der muß hineingehen in dichte Wälder, damit sich ihm das Geheimnis des Blutes offenbart.’ Ibid., 7.
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53 Fischer-Lichte, Theatre, Sacrifice, Ritual, 129. Note that here the word Lichtung (‘clearing’) does not appear and there is no apparent resonance with Heidegger’s use of that term.
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55 Fischer-Lichte, Theatre, Sacrifice, Ritual, 129; Strobl, The Swastika and the Stage, 59.
56 Henning Eichberg, ‘The Nazi Thingspiel: Theater for the Masses in Fascism and Proletarian Culture’, trans. Robert A. Jones, New German Critique, 11 (spring 1977), 133–50 (p. 139).
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79 The inset text may be translated as: ‘The high point of the sojourn in Sopot is a visit to the Waldoper. It unveils, in a unique fashion, the relationship of nature to works of Richard Wagner. The Richard Wagner Festival has a worldwide reputation as an “important festival site for the Reich”. Visitors number in tens of thousands from all lands. General supervisor Hermann Merz is the heralded artistic director. Conductors of a European reputation have been seen at the Waldoper as guests: Schillings, Knappertsbusch, Elmendorff, Pfitzner. The musical leaders at this time are the Staatskapellmeister Professor Heger (Berlin) and Tutein (Munich). The most significant Wagner interpreters are committed to perform at the festival annually.’
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82 Magistrate Demp, ‘Haushaltsplan der Stadt Ostseebad Sopot für 1937’ (18 March 1937). Figures and source materials courtesy of the Muzeum Sopotu (Sopot, Poland).
83 On Waldoper broadcasts, see Stephan Wolting, Bretter, die Kulturkulissen markierten (Wrocław: University of Wrocław, 2003), 277.
84 On Hitler’s affinity with radio, see Fischer-Lichte, Theatre, Sacrifice, Ritual, 158.
85 Luther, ‘Impressions’, 16–19. Comments to this end include Heinrich Knote (tenor, 1922: ‘No theater in the world could create acoustics similar to the Waldoper’s. The gigantic stage, the unsurpassable lighting supporting the magic of nature, brought a unique enthusiasm to each of the artists, impossible in any opera house’); Erich Kleiber (conductor, 1924: ‘The wonder of acoustics of this forest stage enabled every one of the 10,000 visitors even in the most distant corner to understand every word of the singers’); Margarete Arndt-Ober (soprano, 1922–43: ‘The acoustics! You only had to open the mouth and the tone was ringing over the wide, open spaces. Except for the Metropolitan Opera in New York, which was famous for its fabulous acoustics, I never met any stage where you could sing so smoothly and where the voices sounded as well as at Zoppot’); and Robert Heger (chief conductor, 1933–43: ‘I often had the impression that the singers were able to produce their tone more tenderly than they ever could do on the normal opera stage. We had the preliminary conditions of playing music with artistic perfection. Then, in addition to those musical and acoustic advantages, we had the unique effects of the forest scenery’).
86 Ellis, ‘Open-Air Opera and Southern French Difference’, 189.
87 Luther, ‘Impressions’, 19.
88 Luther, ‘Impressions’, 19.
89 Ibid.
90 ‘Die Zoppoter Waldoper […] gehört […] zu dem Ideengehalt unserer herrlichen nationalsozialistischen Bewegung. In ihr erstrahlt das Morgenrot einer großen kulturellen Gemeinsamkeit unseres deutschen Volkes. Ihre Kunst gibt der inneren Wiedergeburt des deutschen Menschen die Erfüllung.’ ‘Geleitworte’, Die Zoppoter Waldoper, ed. Meyer (1934), 10.
91 Potter, ‘The Arts in Nazi Germany’, 589.
92 ‘Die tiefste Absicht von Wagners Reform in der Idee des Theaters’; ‘das Gemeinschaftsleben zu befruchten’; ‘die Reinigung von den niederen naturhaften Trieben und den Sieg des naturhaft Reinen, so verbinden sich Menschentum und Natur zu einer höheren Einheit’. Gotthold Frotscher, ‘Die Naturbühne als Kultstätte (Das Erlebnis des Parsifal in der Zoppoter Waldoper)’, Die Zoppoter Waldoper, ed. Meyer (1934), 46–8 (p. 47).
93 Luther, ‘Impressions’, 18. As Tutein explains: ‘I wanted at all costs to prevent the Rheingold and Der fliegende Holländer of 1938 but, alas, in vain. The Zoppot Waldoper was a natural stage: a wood like wood, trees like trees, air like air, earth like earth, but water like glass – that was nonsense! So in Das Rheingold, the image of the stage at night was enchanting, indeed, but not by nature, now by illusion.’
94 Levi, Music in the Third Reich, 214. Institutions that fell into this category also included the Staatstheater and Philharmonie des Generalgouvernements in Cracow.
95 Dümling, Albrecht, ‘The Target of Racial Purity: The “Degenerate Music Exhibition in Dusseldorf, 1938’, Art, Culture, and Media under the Third Reich, ed. Etlin, Richard A. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 43–72 (p. 48)Google Scholar.
96 Ibid.
97 Friedrich Albert Meyer, ‘Wie Max von Schillings mit der Zoppoter Waldoper verwuchs’, Die Zoppoter Waldoper, ed. Meyer (1934), 31–4 (p. 31).
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99 Luther, Die Zoppoter Waldoper, 369–84.
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109 Hinton, The Films of Leni Riefenstahl, 88.
110 Ibid.
111 Vaget, Hans Rudolf, ‘“Du warst mein Feind von je”: The Beckmesser Controversy Revisited’, Wagner’s Meistersinger: Performance, History, Representation, ed. Nicholas Vasonzyi (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2002), 190–208 (p. 206)Google Scholar.
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113 Imort, ‘Eternal Forest–Eternal Volk’, 55–6.
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116 Kater, The Twisted Muse, 137.
117 Wagner programming at the Waldoper, which appears to have halted in 1944, resumed in 1965. Luther, Die Zoppoter Waldoper, 389–90.
118 The Sopot International Song Festival was founded in 1961 by Władysław Szpilman and was housed at the Waldoper from 1964. Dean Vuletic suggests that Sopot was chosen for this festival because it was ‘a town synonymous with entertainment and tourism’ (Vuletic, Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), 96), which in turn neutralized its history as a town associated with the Nazi past. From 1961 to 1980, it was called the Intervision Song Contest, a Soviet-bloc rival to the Eurovision Song Contest. On Intervision, see Steve Rosenberg, ‘The Cold War Rival to Eurovision’, BBC News, 14 May 2012, available at <https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18006446> (accessed 27 July 2019).
119 Taberner, ‘Günter Grass’s Peeling the Onion’, 139.
120 Günter Grass, ‘How I Spent the War: A Recruit in the Waffen S.S.’, trans. Michael Heim, New Yorker, 4 June 2007, available at <https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/06/04/how-i-spent-the-war> (accessed 21 July 2019).
121 Ibid.
122 Ibid.
123 ‘Nobel Laureate Grass Sues Publisher over Nazi SS Claim’, Deutsche Welle, 24 November 2007, available at <https://www.dw.com/en/nobel-laureate-grass-sues-publisher-over-nazi-ss-claim/a-2970533> (accessed 17 July 2019).
124 Taberner, ‘Günter Grass’s Peeling the Onion’, 139.
125 King, Nicola, Memory, Narrative, Identity: Remembering the Self (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), 21 Google Scholar. Paraphrased in Katharina Hall, ‘Günter Grass’s “Danzig Quintet”’, The Cambridge Companion to Günter Grass, ed. Taberner, 67–81 (p. 73).
126 Hall, ‘Günter Grass’s “Danzig Quintet”’, 73. On Grass and memory, see Hall, Günter Grass’s ‘Danzig Quintet’: Explorations in the Memory and History of the Nazi Era from ‘Die Blechtrommel’ to ‘Im Krebsgang’ (New York: Peter Lang, 2007).
127 Grass, ‘How I Spent the War’.
128 Hall, ‘Günter Grass’s “Danzig Quintet”’, 73. Grass’s treatment of memory and recollection has been read in psychoanalytical terms, particularly as a reflection of Freud’s concept of Nachträglichkeit. On this approach to Grass, see Friedrich Wilhelm Eickhoff, ‘On Nachträglichkeit: The Modernity of an Old Concept’, International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 87 (2006), 1453–69.
129 Potter, ‘The Arts in Nazi Germany’, 589.
130 Grass, The Tin Drum, trans. Breon Mitchell (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2009), 95.
131 Ibid., 111.
132 Note that The Tin Drum is written in Oskar’s voice, vacillating between first and third person.
133 Grass, The Tin Drum, 112–13.
134 Ibid., 113.
135 Ibid., 112–13.
136 Ibid.
137 On Grass’s mockery of Wagner in this episode, see Wesley V. Blomster, ‘Oskar at the Zoppoter Waldoper’, Modern Language Notes, 84/3 (April 1969), 467–72; Siegfried Mews, Günter Grass and his Critics: From ‘The Tin Drum’ to ‘Crabwalk’ (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2013), 27; and Ben-Horin, Michael, Musical Biographies: The Music of Memory in Post-1945 German Literature (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2016), 71–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
138 Thesz, Nicolas, The Communicative Event in the Works of Günter Grass: Stages of Speech, 1959–2015 (London: Boydell & Brewer, 2018), 184 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
139 Grass, The Tin Drum, 113.
140 Ibid., 112–13.
141 Ibid.
142 The Günter Grass Reader, ed. Helmut Frielinghaus (Göttingen: Steidl Verlag, 2004), 66.
143 Grass, The Tin Drum, 95.
144 Mews, Günter Grass and his Critics, 16.
145 Botstein, Leon, ‘German Jews and Wagner’, Richard Wagner and his World, ed. Grey, Thomas (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 151–200 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dirk Kurbjuweit, ‘Can We Separate the Man from his Works?’, Der Spiegel, 12 April 2013, available at <https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/richard-wagner-a-composer-forever-associated-with-hitler-a-892600.html> (accessed 10 December 2019).