MUSICA NON GRATA: SILENT VOICES IN A NOISY WORLD

This matinee concert at the Palais im Großen Garten traces the footsteps of two female composers active in operetta in the early 20^th century, but largely forgotten today. Amélie Nikisch, wife of the famous conductor Arthur Nikisch, was a singer and composer, well-connected and highly productive. Rachel Danziger van Embden was also considered one of the most successful creators of her time, a student of the Wagner biographer Jacques Hartog whose career was suddenly cut short when the Nazis seized power. Nikisch’s operetta »Meine Tante, Deine Tante«, first performed in Dresden in 1911, and Danziger’s »Die Dorfkomtesse« of 1910 – both of which were even mentioned in »The New York Times« at the time – will be given their first performance in decades. A moderator will describe the contemporary background, illuminating the fates of the composers’ families, thereby also focusing on the persecution of creative artists in multiple countries and continents and discussing the notion of a political mandate of the arts: a programme that is worth discovering, not only for fans of the operetta genre.

Amélie Nikisch »Meine Tante, Deine Tante«
Rachel Danziger van Embden »Die Dorfkomtesse«
(both performed in an abbreviated piano arrangement by Kai Hinrich Müller)

This event is part of the series Opera & Democracy: Transatlantic Conversations & Concerts which is curated by Kai Hinrich Müller, presented by the Thomas Mann House, Los Angeles and institutional partners in Germany and the United States. Through conversations and concerts this series explores the democratic potential of opera and discusses the contributions that opera creators have made for democracies, then and now.