Clashing Neoclassicisms: Ernst Krenek’s <i>Leben des Orest</i> at the Berlin Kroll Opera

Abstract Two months after its premiere in Leipzig, Ernst Krenek’s Leben des Orest (1930) came to the Berlin Kroll Opera, a notorious centre for experimental, modernist productions. Inevitably, critics compared the two productions, much to the Berlin production’s detriment. In particular, critics faulted the Berlin stage designs by Greek-Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico. I argue that this reception reflected a fundamental divergence in Krenek and de Chirico’s neoclassicism, which was only exacerbated by how neither Krenek nor de Chirico’s neoclassicism aligned with pre-existing expectations about the Kroll Opera’s production aesthetic, as exemplified in Igor Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex (staged at the Kroll in 1928). Attending to these differences not only explains the troubled reception of Leben des Orest at the Kroll, but also provides fertile ground to examine the complicated and sometimes contradictory meanings ascribed to neoclassicism in the interwar period, especially as it moved between media and across national borders.