Manfred Gurlitt and the Japanese Operatic Scene, 1939-1972

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  • マンフレット・グルリットと日本のオペラ界（1939－1972）

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Manfred Gurlitt (1890-1972), a gifted composer and conductor, came tofeel he had to escape his native Germany in the late 1930s, as did manyother musicians. Although he had, in an idiosyncratic fashion, come toterms with the National Socialist regime, he exiled himself to Japan in1939, hoping to obtain a position that would allow him to maintain oreven to burnish his reputation in the world of music. His most brilliantearlier successes had been in opera, and in Japan his career was mainlylinked with opera. He worked diligently to affirm the “correct” Europeanway of performing the operatic repertoire, and produced many first-timeproductions of high quality. His competent, rigorous work in the fieldgrounded the whole operatic domain of postwar Japan, and indeed hisinfluence continues to be felt to this day. An article in the Mainichi shinbunin 1956 stated that “no musician has had such a vast and importantinfluence over the Japanese musical world.” His years in Japan, however,were spent with an underlying sentiment of displacement. His sense ofunease was compounded by dissatisfaction with and unfulfilled desire forWestern (particularly German) acknowledgment of the merit of his work.In this article I aim to shed new light on the place of Manfred Gurlitt intwentieth-century music history by reexamining his Japanese activity, withsome reference to his early oeuvre as a composer and success as a conductorin Germany.

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