Interpretive Restoration: Othmar Schoeck’s Das Schloß Dürande in a New Edition

Yulia S. Veksler

Abstract


The article highlights a high-profile project by the Bern Academy of Arts to bring back into musical life one of the key works in the history of 20th-century Swiss music — Othmar Schoeck’s opera Das Schloß Dürande (1941). For many decades, despite its manifest musical merits, the performance of this composition seemed absolutely impossible due to the political overtones with which it is associated. Various “interpretive restoration” strategies were aimed at creating a new version of the opera. In the first place, the libretto, which was created by the Nazi writer Hermann Burte and based on the novella of the same name by the 19th-century German romantic author Joseph Eichendorff, underwent significant revision. The rather low literary level of the original libretto, which employed a large number of ideological clichés ad slogans, required the replacement of more than half of the text, essentially involving its rewriting based on the appropriate verse texts written by Eichendorff. The changes also affected the vocal part. In addition, a careful study of historical documents made it possible to clarify the circumstances of the opera’s premiere, which took place in Nazi Berlin in 1943. After a mere four performances, the opera was removed at the request of the Third Reich ideologist, Hermann Göring. New biographical information has also more fully revealed the position of Schoeck, who was not a supporter of National Socialism. Considering that “being Swiss” meant adopting a scrupulous attitude of “neutrality”, the composer collaborated with the Nazis for career reasons. The result of many years of work on the project was the performance of the updated opera Daß Schloß Dürande at the Meiningen Theatre in 2019. It didn’t convince everyone. However, the determining factor in assessing the opera was not so much the quality of the music and libretto, but rather the problematic history of its creation and reception in an ideological context. Thus, even in its new “denazified” version, Das Schloß Dürande remains closely connected with the past.

Keywords: Othmar Schoeck, Joseph von Eichendorff, Switzerland, 20th century music, National Socialism, interpretive restoration, history of perception

For citation: Veksler, Yu. S. (2024). Interpretive Restoration: Othmar Schoeck’s Das Schloß Dürande in a New Edition. Contemporary Musicology, 8(4), 112−134. https://doi.org/10.56620/2587-9731-2024-4-112-134


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DOI: https://doi.org/10.56620/2587-9731-2024-4-112-134

Copyright (c) 2024 Yulia S. Veksler

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