The Promised Land: Toward a Retotalized Theatre
The Promised Land: Toward a Retotalized Theatre
This chapter examines the total work as the regeneration of sacred theatre. It considers three dramatists of the 1920s: Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Paul Claudel, and Bertolt Brecht, together with Antonin Artaud’s theatre writings and manifestos for a “theatre of cruelty.” The connections between them rest on inner and outer coincidence: the Catholics Hofmannsthal and Claudel both turned to the world theatre of the Spanish baroque. Hofmannsthal collaborated with the director Max Reinhardt in the Salzburg Festival, and a commission from Reinhardt was the occasion of Claudel’s spectacle Christopher Columbus, with music by Darius Milhaud. Brecht was greatly impressed by the premiere of Claudel’s play at the Berlin State Opera in 1930; his own treatment of the crossing of the Atlantic, the 1929 Lehrstück on the aviator Lindbergh with music by Paul Hindemith, can also be read as his version of Artaud’s theatre of cruelty. Artaud (1896–1948) and Brecht (1898–1956)—like Mallarmé and Nietzsche—were almost exact contemporaries.
Keywords: total work of art, sacred theater, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Paul Claudel, Bertolt Brecht, Antonin Artaud
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