ABSTRACT
This chapter interrogates the intersection of theory and practice in Paul Bekker's work by offering case studies that bring out facets of his humanistic approach, and through which it is possible to explore further its ethical ramifications. It begins with a discussion of Bekker's 1932 staging of Weill's Die Burgschaft as an enlightening example of his idiosyncratic attitude to politics at a time when the Weimar repertory was otherwise taking an increasingly conservative turn. When understood in light of Weimar tensions between the individual and the collective and the metaphysical and the physical, 'voice' becomes an important mediator for Bekker's ethical aims for music. The chapter focuses on the analysis of Bekker's practice by exploring an opera by Hugo Herrmann, Vasantasena, which was commissioned by Bekker for performance at Wiesbaden in 1930. It analyses the opera as a work profoundly based in the narrative mode of melodrama, which provided a means to a direct communication with the audience.
