About the work
Der Sprung über den Schatten is a comic opera in three acts (ten scenes) by Ernst Krenek, his first self-written libretto; the title plays on the German idiom for "jumping over one's own shadow." The composer, only 22 at the time, wrote the work in 1923; the premiere was conducted by Ludwig Rottenberg on 9 June 1924 at the Frankfurt Opera House as part of the 54th festival of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein, directed by Walther Brügmann.
Plot
In a small present-day residential town, a mixed society of aristocrats and commoners becomes entangled in seductions, infidelities and a hypnosis experiment, set against the fashionable dances of the 1920s. Disguises and mistaken identities scramble the characters' loyalties and affairs until, in the end, everyone "jumps over their own shadow" and comes to terms with the situation.
Cultural significance
As a work of Krenek's youth, the opera mixes atonality with jazz elements and classical forms such as rondo, passacaglia and fugue, anticipating the social satire and jazz influence of "Jonny spielt auf". After decades of neglect, the roughly 95-minute work was rediscovered in 1989 and is now regarded as a revealing early step on Krenek's path toward his "Zeitopern".