About the work
Das Dorf ohne Glocke is a three-act Singspiel by Eduard Künneke with a book by August Neidhart, based on a Hungarian legend by Árpád Pásztor. It premiered on 5 April 1919 at the Friedrich-Wilhelmstädtisches Theater in Berlin and became Künneke's first major stage success — fourteen other theatres took up the piece that same year.
Plot
In an eighteenth-century Transylvanian village, the residents collect 500 guilders to give their priest a new church bell for his fiftieth anniversary in office. When the priest instead gives the money to a struggling blacksmith's apprentice, rumours spread and the village is nearly torn apart. In the end a nobleman buys the bell, reconciliation follows, and the piece closes with its consecration.
Cultural significance
The work's success marked Künneke's breakthrough as an operetta composer and paved the way, two years later, for his international triumph with Der Vetter aus Dingsda.