Tales from the Vienna Woods (play)

Tales from the Vienna Woods (1931) is the most famous play by Austro-Hungarian writer Ödön von Horváth (1901–1938). It was premièred in Berlin in 1931 and has been filmed several times. Before the première, the German writer and playwright, Carl Zuckmayer nominated the play for the Kleist Prize, which it won, the most significant literary award of the Weimar Republic.^[1] The play's title is a reference to the waltz, Tales from the Vienna Woods by Johann Strauss II. Horvarth's play premièred at the Deutsches Theatre, Berlin. Written in the late 1920s during the period of catastrophic unemployment and the Great Depression, the play is a key work of modern drama, described by Erich Kaestner as "a Viennese folk play accompanied by Viennese folk songs". It is a bitter satire about the mendacity and brutality of the petite-bourgeoisie, named ironically after the forested highlands near the Austrian capital that are so idealised in the waltz. In the play, Viennese 'Gemütlichkeit' or 'coziness' becomes a hollow phrase; the tragic, brutal story of the sweet girl Marianne and the deeply conventional butcher Oskar reflects the hardships and anxieties of the late 1920s during the global economic crisis.

Adaptations

Film

Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald (1934) directed by Georg Jacoby.^[2]
G'schichten aus dem Wienerwald (1961) TV movie directed by Erich Neuberg.^[3]
Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald (1964) directed by Michael Kehlmann.^[4]
Tales from the Vienna Woods (1979) directed by Maximilian Schell.^[5]
Légendes de la forêt viennoise (1993) directed by Andre Engel.^[6]
Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald (1999).^[7]
Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald (2013) directed by Herbert Fottinger and Andre Turnheim.^[8]

Opera

Tales from the Vienna Woods (2014) by composer, HK Gruber. It premiered at the Bregenz Festival under the direction of Michael Sturminger, with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the Prague Philharmonic Choir under the baton of the composer.^[9]

References