HThousands of people are currently taking to the streets across Germany to demonstrate against right-wing extremism and exclusion. And for democracy. At the same time, nine thousand kilometers away from the protests in Los Angeles, the basic values of democratic society are being discussed – and heard. The Thomas Mann House (TMH), the writer's former home in exile and today the residence of the Federal Republic of Germany, invites you to a concert and discussion.
The focus of the event, which marks the start of a series called “Democracy and Opera”. which is organized by the TMH together with partner institutions in the United States and Germany, represents the art form that Thomas Mann loved so much. Opera and its four hundred year history are put to the test: How diverse and accessible is this art form? What options does she have to break with her elitist reputation? What potential does it have for a multi-voiced democracy?
A life for the common good
The transatlantic conversation and concert series, put together by the musicologist Kai Hinrich Müller, currently a fellow at the TMH, connects history with the present. It is intended to show that the examination of world political events has always resonated in opera. The Krolloper in Berlin is particularly remembered: as the cultural institution in the interwar years, which, like no other, was based on the idea of being opera for everyone and for every day.
As the seat of the German Parliament after the Reichstag fire, it was also the place where democracy came to an end in 1933 through the National Socialists' Enabling Act. The Krolloper director Otto Klemperer said about the forced closure of the theater at the time: “They may close our opera house, but they cannot kill the idea.”
It is precisely this idea of art and culture that drives the fight for democratic values and determines the program of the event at the TMH. Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's “The Yes Man” opens. The opera tells of a teacher's dangerous research trip to “the great doctors”. A boy wants to accompany him because his mother is sick and needs medication. He is allowed to do so because: “Many agree with what is wrong, but he does not agree with illness.” But the boy himself becomes ill on the journey. The community has to decide: Do we turn back together without learning the wisdom of the “great doctors”, or do we move on and plunge the weakened into the valley for the benefit of others? As part of the travel group, the boy also has to decide whether he will sacrifice his life for the common good. He says: yes.
How politically effective can opera be?
The piece asks about the mutual responsibility between a society and its members. What value does the individual have in a collective? How much freedom exists for self-determined action, and how much of it should exist in order to protect the common good?
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