ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Paul Bekker's approach to staging in order to show how his ideals for operatic performance were thoroughly and consistently grounded in his conceptions about music's ethical force and the potential for it to function as such in Weimar society. After a brief account of Bekker's debt to Wagner's ethical-aesthetic ambitions for opera and the extent to which it fed into his own ideals for operatic life Germany, the chapter details his role and responsibilities as Intendant at the Wiesbaden Staatstheater. The chapter offers a snapshot of the Staatstheater in the context of the Weimar Republic, and an analysis of Bekker's repertory choices at both Kassel and Wiesbaden. It concentrates to a conceptual analysis of the theoretical framework underpinning this artistic approach: close textual reading of a selection of sources reveals how Bekker developed his operatic aesthetic and sought to guide and educate his contemporaries in the process.
