U.K.: MAX BRAND'S OPERA 'MASCHINIST HOPKINS' RECEIVES ITS BRITISH PREMIERE 72 YEARS AFTER IT WAS WRITTEN

Record ID: 392253

  • Title: U.K.: MAX BRAND'S OPERA 'MASCHINIST HOPKINS' RECEIVES ITS BRITISH PREMIERE 72 YEARS AFTER IT WAS WRITTEN
  • Date: 25th November 2001
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (English) PETER TREGEAR MUSICAL DIRECTOR OF MASCHINIST HOPKINS SAYING: "Here we have an opera in which machines, technology actually take an anthomorphic presence, the machines actually sing in the opera, they actually engage with the characters."
  • Embargoed: 10th December 2001 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Topics: Entertainment
  • Reuters ID: LVA1MK4U00QUMZ5O4KGI1QLCB4SK
  • Story Text: Max Brand's opera Maschinist Hopkins has received its British premiere 72 years after it was written. The German composer's work, along with hundreds of pieces of music and art, was banned by Hitler under the title of Entartete Kunst: Degenerate Art.
    If the Nazis had had their way, this opera would not be getting its British premiere at London's South Bank. But it's because Hitler was so successful in his cleansing campaign that Max Brand's Maschinist Hopkins opens in London 72 years after it was written....
    No act of cultural barbarism has ever matched the campaign by the Third Reich to airbrush from common consciousness the music and art it deemed 'degenerate'. What might have evolved as the language of music in Western Europe, had composers not been forced from their homeland at the most crucial stage of their careers, is now being addressed with increasing intensity.
    The British staging of Maschinist Hopkins was part of a day of performances under the heading 'Thwarted Voices: Music Suppressed by the Third Reich'. Orchestral, vocal and chamber concerts by composers from the likes of Schoenberg, Schreker, Goldschmidt and Webern were heard in Europe for the first time in years.
    Max Brand's opera was written in a period that saw an unprecedented number of new operas staged in Germany. Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera is one of the few that are in repertoire today.
    Written in 1929 to his own powerful text, Brand's work took Europe by storm. This was one of the first operas with contemporary settings, based on contemporary people.
    Maschinist Hopkins had 40 different productions in one year alone. Between the years of 1929 and 1933, it was performed about 140 times - statistics almost unparalleled in operatic history. Since then it has only been staged three times.
    Peter Tregear, a Professor of Music at Cambridge University, directed the team - made up of professional singers as well as Cambridge students - in the new production.
    He was compelled to perform this opera, partly due to the exciting work Brand had written, with such an experimental, complex and diverse score, partly due to a mission to reverse Hitler's evil cleansing programme."There is an ethical imperative in actually performing this music and recapturing it in that way."
    Australian comedian and author Barry Humphries, otherwise known as Dame Edna Everage, has been on a similar mission for years. Ever since his school days in Melbourne, Humphries has been fascinated by the music that came out of Europe during the 1920s and 1930s, hungrily collecting sheet music and recordings of works by composers who were forced by the Nazis to flee for their lives.
    As a result Europe has been robbed of some extraordinary music, much of which was banned not just due to the Jewish composers who penned them but due to the experimental nature of the writing which was too radical and challenging for the ultra-conservative Nazis. Maschinist Hopkins was typical in this sense.
    It explores the influence of new technology on the way we work and play. Blending grand operatic ambitions with a cinematically inspired plt, riotous 1920s jazz, popular dance idioms, Puccini-esqe emotional intensity and the musical expressionism of Strauss and Berg, even 72 years on this opera sounds remarkably modern.
    Whether Maschinist Hopkins will ever find its way onto the stage of the Royal Opera House remains to be seen.
    --
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