The Baden-Baden Lesson On Consent - Premiere

Premiere

Brecht's programme note described the work as unfinished and as the "product of various theories of a musical, dramatic and political nature aiming at the collective practice of the arts". The 50-minute piece was conceived as a multi-media performance, including scenes of physical knockabout clowning, choral sections and a short film by Carl Koch, Dance of Death, featuring Valeska Gert (

Along with its companion, the radio cantata Lindbergh's Flight, the piece was offered as an example of a new genre, "the teaching-play or Lehrstück", in which the traditional division between actor and audience is abolished; the piece is intended for its participants only (Brecht specifically including the film makers and clowns along with the chorus). The final chorus of Lindbergh's Flight appears at the beginning of The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent. "Cruelty, violence and death" are explored by the play, which "broaches the subject of complicity between the helper and the forces of power and violence." The action concerns a wrecked flight crew being brought to terms with their non-existence. While the pilot complains that he must not die, the others accept that their significance lies in being anonymous parts of a larger whole.

A grotesque clown scene, in which the first clown, called Smith, is violently dismembered by his two friends in an attempt to alleviate his pain, caused spectators at the Baden-Baden festival to riot, according to the actor who played Smith; the playwright Gerhardt Hauptmann walked out. (This clown scene was later reworked by Heiner Müller in his Heartplay, 1981). Despite the controversy, the production was a critical success. Performances in Vienna, Munich, Mainz, Dresden, Breslau and Frankfurt followed. Schott Music published Lehrstück the same year with Hindemith's score.