“You must return to life”: Notes on the Reception of Das Wunder der Heliane and Jonny spielt auf

Abstract

This chapter discusses Erich Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane (1927) with Ernst Krenek's Jonny spielt auf (1927). Korngold's Heliane, his intended magnum opus and the other major event of Vienna's 1927–1928 season, was, like Jonny, a high-profile document of an “opera crisis.” Reasonably enough, the two works have been read as antithetical: what could a “jazz opera” featuring a blackface bandleader and a slapstick death by train have to do with a “timeless” morality play culminating in not one but two resurrections? In Heliane, Korngold set out to eclipse the Gustav Mahler of the Second and Eighth symphonies. Jonny, conversely, offered music seemingly determined to leave the feelings cold.