About the work
Jonny spielt auf is an opera in two parts (eleven scenes) by Ernst Krenek, who also wrote the libretto himself. Krenek composed the work in 1926 while serving as a conductor at the Kassel state theatre; the premiere, conducted by Gustav Brecher, took place on 10 February 1927 at the Neues Theater in Leipzig.
Plot
The composer Max loves the singer Anita, who is also courted by the vain star violinist Daniello. The jazz violinist Jonny steals Daniello's valuable violin and smuggles it into Anita's suitcase; once the theft comes to light, a chain of mix-ups over identity and ownership follows. Fleeing from Jonny, Daniello is run over by a train, while Max and Anita are finally united – to the sound of Jonny's fiddling beneath a station clock that symbolically shows the new, Americanised age.
Cultural significance
As a jazz-, cabaret- and operetta-inflected "Zeitoper", Jonny spielt auf captured the mood of the late Weimar Republic: within a few years it reached more than 40 opera houses, was translated into over a dozen languages and was staged at the Metropolitan Opera. The character of Jonny also became a target of racist and antisemitic attacks and, in 1938, featured on the poster for the Nazi exhibition "Entartete Musik" ("Degenerate Music"); after 1933 Krenek's works were banned in Germany.