Zeitoper

(Ger.: ‘opera of the times’).

Term for a type of opera current in Germany especially during the 1920s and 30s, dealing with issues ‘of the times’, usually socio-political ones. It is applied to such works as Krenek’s Jonny spielt auf (first performed in 1927), which deals with the claims of pleasure-seeking as opposed to intellectual pursuits, Hindemith’s Neues vom Tage (1929), a satire on social behaviour, and Weill’s Die Bürgschaft (1932), a wide-ranging commentary on current civilization and its values.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L. Knessl: ‘Das dunkle Wasser: Krenek zwischen “Jonny” und Zeitfragen’, NZM, Jg.125 (1964), 553–4

S.C. Cook: Opera for a New Republic: the Zeitopern of Krenek, Weill, and Hindemith (Ann Arbor, 1988)