Symposium: Cheek, ignorance and vice!

The tensions between the radical forces on the fringes of the Weimar Republic were palpable; the legendary Kroll Opera under Otto Klemperer was forced to close its doors in July 1931 under fire from right-wing parties, for whom the modernism cultivated there was a constant stumbling block. Yet Klemperer, of all people, had rejected the premiere of Mahagony in 1929 because of the play's "crassness."


It was Ernst Josef Aufricht, the founder of The Threepenny Opera, who brought the piece to Berlin on a private initiative, engaging former Kroll conductor Alexander Zemlinsky as musical director and Caspar Neher as stage director and set designer.


Instead of singers, the production was cast almost exclusively with actors, which forced Weill to rework the piece and provoked corresponding clashes with Brecht during rehearsals. Nevertheless, the production ran for nearly fifty performances by the spring of 1932 – one of the last major theatrical successes of the Weimar Republic before the great turning point in 1933.


Even today, there is much talk of a turning point. This puts the play's relevance to the test once again: Does The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogany, in its resonance with the political realities, still have the same potential for scandalization as it did in 1931, or has Brecht's "Berlin-style, cheeky shoving of capitalism"—as Hugo Leichtentritt put it in his review for the magazine Die Musik—since lost its sting?


The symposium at the Deutsche Oper aims to explore these and other questions in cooperation with the project "Berlin Opera Culture 1925–1944," based at the Humboldt University of Berlin and funded by the German Research Foundation.

• Director: Prof. Dr. Arne Stollberg, Institute of Musicology and Media Studies.
  

Saturday, June 21, 2025

10:00 – 10:45 a.m.
Patrick Primavesi [Leipzig] "Off to Mahagonny!" The Collaboration between Brecht and Weill on a "New Opera"


10:45 – 11:30 a.m.
Morten Grage [Berlin] On the Way to the "Ideal Form of Musical Theater": MAHAGONNY Versions Between Songspiel and Opera


*** Coffee Break ***


11:45 – 12:30 p.m.
Johannes C. Gall [Frankfurt am Main] Commodity, Parody, Gesture, Form
Concepts of Epic Opera in the Ninth Scene of THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CITY OF MAHAGONNY


*** Lunch Break ***


2:30 – 3:15 p.m.
Tobias Robert Klein [Stuttgart] Kroll or Kudamm, Songspiel or Singspiel?
MAHAGONNY, Berlin and the Tradition of Theater Singing


3:15 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Laura-Maxine Kalbow [Hamburg]
Advocate of Modernism: Alexander Zemlinsky as Weill's Conductor


Sunday, June 22, 2025

11:00 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.
Stefanie Mathilde Frank [Cologne]
The Stage Designer as an "Ingenious Narrator"; Caspar Neher's Work with Bertolt Brecht


11:45 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Alina Bernholt [Berlin]
"Alon Communism," "State Fermatas," and "De-Operization." On the Press Reception of the Berlin Premiere of Brecht and Weill's RISE AND FALL OF THE CITY OF MAHAGONNY (1931)


*** Lunch Break ***


2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Stephen Hinton [Stanford / CA, USA]
"The Lovers" in Mahagonny: On the Origin and Significance of the Crane Duet


3:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Panel discussion with Camilla Bork, Dörte Schmidt, Arne Stollberg, and others