opereta

The Origination of the Slovak National Theatre: Building, Ensemble, and City Paradoxes
This essay focuses on the relations of German, Hungarian, Czech and Slovak theatres in the joint theatre building. Using music as a language, Oskar Nedbal, the theatre director in the period 1923–1930, bridged the nationalist rivalry; Karel Nedbal, together with the stage director Viktor Šulc and scene designer František Tröster, created in 1928–1938 a period of a modern opera. The stage director Ján Jamnický, influenced by Russian constructivism and German expressionism, created the counterpart to the modern opera. He and architect Emil Belluš found the impulses for this in the guest appearances of German actors and actresses, including Alexander Moissi, Ernst Deutsch, Tilla Durieux and Fritz Kortner. As the leading personalities of the new generation of Slovak theatre artists, they liberated the stage, and stepped away from the imitation of reality to the theatre as a sign of reality. The building of the Municipal Theatre witnessed also the birth of modern Slovak opera in works by Eugen Suchoň, Ján Cikker and Juraj Beneš. In its time the Bratislava theatre was a unique phenomenon: every week it gave performances in four different languages, thus being a certain “theatre of nations” in the city which was linked to Vienna, the capital of the former Empire, by a tram.