2021 journal article
On the Politics of Performing Wagner Outdoors: Open-Air Opera, Gesamtkunstwerk and the Third Reich’s ‘Forest Opera’, 1933–45
Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 146(1), 147–180.
UN Sustainable Development Goal Categories
13. Climate Action
(OpenAlex)
Source: Crossref
Added: January 21, 2022
AbstractThis article explores the politics of performing Wagner outdoors, focusing on theWaldoperin 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 inculcatingvölkischcharacter 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 theWaldoperand its attendant mythologies.