Opera in the 20th century

The year wherein Adolf Hitler retreats in his Führer bunker to control Nazi Germany from there and to hold his last radio speech; Russian troops liberate the largely abandoned concentration camp Auschwitz; beginning of the Conference of Yalta. Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt discuss the situation in Europe after the end of the Second World War; Adolf Hitler gives the command to destruction of all public works and facilities in Germany where the advancing allies could make use of: the so-called Nero command; Doetinchem, Zutphen, Meppel, Ede, Nijkerk and Deventer are liberated by the Canadians, Enschede by the English; In his bunker in Berlin, Adolf Hitler admits to his generals that the War is lost. In doing so, he also outsources all military command; American troops liberate the concentration camp Dachau; Joseph Goebbels commits suicide and Berlin surrenders; weekly magazine Elsevier appears for the first time in October; the Netherlands accepts the Charter of the UN; The Process of Nuremberg begins by the end of November.

In this episode fragments from:

·      Benjamin Britten- Peter Grimes

·      André Mathieu- Scènes de ballet

·      Sergei Prokofiev- War and Peace (Война и мир, Voyna i mir)

Other opera productions from 1945:

·               Henri Sauguet- Les Forains (ballet)

·               Igor Stravinsky- Firebird 1945 edition (ballet)

·               Werner Egk- Circe

·               Hilding Rosenberg- The Isle of Bliss (Lycksalighetens ö)

·               Emmerich Kálmán- Marinka

·               Ernst Krenek- What Price Confidence?

·               Louis Gruenberg- Volpone

·               Rutland Boughton- Avalon

·               Pablo Sorozábal- La eterna canción

·               Nicolae Bretan- A Különös Széder-est

·               Paul Dessau- Die Reisen des Glücksgotts

·               Werner Egk- Circe