All Quiet on the Western Front

[Garde Grenadier]

I was told that "Im Westen nichts Neues" has now been made into an Opera or Musical and was first performed at Osnabrück recently - in the hometown of the author Erich Maria Remarque. There is also an excellent museum about this important and famous writer.

I wonder how one can put a book of that sort into that sort of music?

Has anyone got more information?

Regards

Daniel

[McIntee]

Never heard of it before but I'm struggeling to see how it will work. How do they intend to do the battle scenes? The shelling? Yet there are plenty of scenes that should suit the stage but how to make it all gel and flow...can't see it myself.

I'd like to see someone do another movie based on the book though. With the technology in cinematics today it could easily be a classic, although the casting would be paramount. Would be great to see it done in German really.

Ach well...I can dream I guess.

John

[MartinWills]

A year or three ago English National Opera premiered "The Silver Tassie" whichh included WW1 scenes, so it has been done.

The Royal Ballet also performs a work called Gloria to the music of Poulenc which has a WW1 and rememberance theme.

This sort of thing can be done with some imagination, design and stagecraft.

[jhill]

Jeez! Opera and ballet. This forum is going "upscale", isn't it?

1. A little bit of Googling provides the following news release about the Osnabrück premier:

American composer Nancy Van de Vate has developed the story

into a three-part opera, to be staged for the first time

September 8.

2. The only other Great War subject I can recall treated operatically is Robert Kurka's "The Good Soldier Schweik" which had its 1958 premiere at the

New York City Opera.

3. I don't know if an opera about the war , as such, is necessary. I think that Berg's Wozzeck or Honegger's Jeanne d'Arc au Bucher (not really an opera) witness the emotional trauma of the conflict without using plot.

4. This thread is really off topic since Tommy Atkins was a million miles from the nearest opera. The houses in Britain and France were, I believe, closed for the duration as opera was considered elitist. Germany, however, kept the opera houses open. The best known new opera of that period is perhaps Pfitzner's Palestrina which opened in Munich in 1917. It concerned the debates on liturgical music at the Council of Trent! It was quite popular, all things considered. Perhaps it took folk's minds away from the trenches.

5. There are relevant operatic topics though. Have you heard Enrico Caruso's recording of "Over There"? How about John McCormack's "Long, Long Trail"?

Sorry about all the words.

[Kate Wills]

Jeez!  Opera and ballet.  This forum is going "upscale", isn't it?

I don't know if an opera about the war , as such, is necessary...

...  This thread is really off topic since Tommy Atkins was a million miles from the nearest opera...

James, are you one of these people who believe that war begins and ends on the battlefields?

The Great War affected virtually every human activity, including the arts. You may not think an opera about the war is necessary; Remarque would have disagreed. His ambition as a young man had been to make a career in music, preferably as a composer. The war swept him up, and his artistic response resulted in one of its literary classics, All Quiet on the Western Front. This new opera (whatever its qualities) is a direct descendant of Remarque’s own war service.

Alban Berg would also have been at odds with you over the necessity of writing Wozzeck. He had already toyed with the idea of setting Buchner’s play several years before the war, but admitted that without the war and his own military experiences he would never have found the means of expression to compose Wozzeck.

Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale was also born of war, and shows its effects. Like Berg, Stravinsky unshackles his music from Romanticism, in the same way that the war had driven a stake between the imperial grandeur of the old world and the tattered remains of the new. Unlike you, I am not acquainted with Kurka’s “The Good Soldier Schweik”, but I have seen “Palestrina” (and got bored). Composers, like other creative folk, didn’t abandon everything else in favour of war subjects from 1914 to 18. I believe Pfitzner had been working on Palestrina for some time before its premiere. The best known new opera of that period? I would have thought Richard Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos or Die Frau Ohne Schatten could make better claims.

Opera houses were not closed because opera was elitist, but occasionally because, funnily enough, there was a war on. Large buildings were needed to serve various purposes, such as storage in the case of Covent Garden. Opera is an international business, and half the workforce was no longer available; often because it bore an enemy nationality. Native musicians and theatre staff, as from any other walk of life, joined up or were called up. In short, you couldn’t get the staff or the punters, and the financiers had other ideas.

Tommy Atkins may, as you say, have felt a million miles from the nearest opera house, but that is not to say he didn’t yearn for music. You have already mentioned Caruso and McCormack. Many other concert stars were engaged in entertaining the troops and in fundraising efforts at home.

Let’s not forget some of the opera singers who served in the forces: for starters there is half the cast who premiered Wozzeck in Vienna. Back home, Elgar’s favourite baritone Charles Mott was conscripted, and continued to give concerts while in training. He died of wounds in May 1918. Please spare a thought also for the Canadian bass, Edmund Burke, whose war wounds ended his career, and bass-baritone Herbert Heyner, who lost a leg while serving with the 12 DLI. Heyner endured countless operations and constant pain for decades, and was a noted interpreter of the wounded Amfortas in Wagner’s Parsifal. “No one to my mind has ever sung it with such poignant feeling" said conductor Sir Henry Wood. Hardly surprising, given the reality he brought to the role.

Here at least is one Pal who doesn’t regard Daniel’s original posting as “off-topic” or the Forum “going upscale”. This new opera is yet another manifestation of the stranglehold the war continues to exert on succeeding generations, be they interested in music or the military, or as in my case - both.

[Annette Burgoyne]

I have never been to a opera but I can not see why All Quiet on the Western Front should not work as an opera. Radio put on plays which can not be seen with your eyes but that does not stop one seeing whats going on in ones head.

This sort of thing can be done with some imagination, design and stagecraft

Just because you can not see the battle scenes does not mean that it wont be moving, if you know what I mean, I am not doing a very good of explaining myself.

Saying that, it would never beat the 1930's film.

Annette

[Guest Ian Bowbrick]

Whilst it was not 'Opera' don't forget a WW2 plot made into a musical called 'South Pacific'.

Of course the opera may very well bear little resemblance to the film, in the way that films sometimes bear little resemblance to the books they are based on.

Ian

[McIntee]

Great post Kate and I see where you're coming from Annette. Good point.

John

[jhill]

James, are you one of these people who believe that war begins and ends on the battlefields?

Kate,

Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!

I have obviously created an impression entirely opposite to that which I intended. I am, in fact, delighted that the subject of opera and the war has been put forward for discussion.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), I come from an environment in which subjects like the distinction between "High" and "Low" culture or "Upscale" and "Downscale" social distinctions are often discussed more with levity than with seriousness and conviction. On re-reading these posts I suspect I have made the elementary mistake of assuming everyone has the same understandings I have. I appologize if I have given any offense. I certainly did not try to issue "flame-bait".

That said, I suspect there will be disagreements from time to time here. Art and culture are right up there with religion and politics as subjects upon which the individual mind must differ.

[Garde Grenadier]

James, the problem of understanding - unfortunately - is words...

I nearly bitterly regretted trying to make a point in another thread (spelling mistakes...), but thinking again I still go along with my original point despite the explosion of mines all around me.

I thought when you wrote: "Jeez! Opera and ballet. This forum is going "upscale", isn't it? I don't know if an opera about the war , as such, is necessary..." that you had a on your face with a touch of irony.

But when you wrote "This thread is really off topic" I thought - well, maybe other people will that put right - or put me right.

Honi soit...

Thanks anyway for all the answers, especially Kate's and Annette's.

Daniel

[CROONAERT]

Not opera, I know (a subject upon which (apart from Adolf's favourite) I am totally clueless), but another couple of WW1 related stage plays that I can think of (one of them a musical?) are "Oh,What a Lovely War" (familiar to most on this forum, I suspect).This was to be performed by a Youth theatre local to me recently, but ,after the onset of "Gulf War II" (!), the local council decided it was "politically incorrect" and they had to scrap it!!!!

The other is "The Accrington Pals" by Peter Whelan. This has been performed across the UK and is a regular in New York theatres. I've never seen it, so I can't comment, but it seems to achieve "rave" reviews.

Dave.