George Antheil's Transatlantic: An American in the Weimar Republic

Abstract

OIIIn 25 May 1930 George Antheil's opera Transatlantic received its premiere in Frankfurt am Main. Set in New York, Transatlantic recounts a presidential election tainted with corruption and scandal, but the opera ends happily with the honest candidate, Hector Jackson, winning both at love and politics. Appropriately enough for the setting, Antheil's score borrowed elements from jazz and American popular music. The staging, however, relied on a number of new techniques common then in German avant-garde theater, such as filmed sequences and multiple stages. Although critically acclaimed, Transatlantic received only six performances in Frankfurt and was not produced elsewhere during Antheil's lifetime.' Transatlantic was Antheil's first attempt at opera. Not yet thirty years old at the time of the premiere, Antheil had been living in Europe since June of 1922 and had achieved considerable notoriety as a composer and pianist. Antheil spent his European sojourn, which lasted until 1933, primarily in Paris in the company of Sylvia Beach, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and others. As the foremost musical member of this illustrious expatriate circle, Antheil and his Parisian exploits are known from his autobiography, Bad Boy of Music, as well as from the memoirs of others.2