The opera question in Belgrade as 'staged' by Milan Grol

Abstract

Writer, politician, and dramaturge Milan Grol can be credited with the most important contribution of an individual to the modernization of the National Theatre in Belgrade. A reformer, legislator, organizer of international theatre cooperation, and manager of the National Theatre, he also played a key role in defining 'the opera question' in Belgrade during the first two decades of the 20th century. Commendable as his activities were in terms of the institutional organization and advancement of South Slavic theatres, it must also be noted that owing to his unfavorable attitude towards the performance of opera at the National Theatre, the development of its opera ensemble and establishment of an artistically worthy opera repertoire at this theatre came to a halt in the first decade of the 20th century. Grol's views about opera at the National Theatre reflect a striking ambivalence in his dual professional personality of a politician and writer. As a member of the Independent Radical Party, he supported a pro-European orientation and cultural elitism, which were meant to serve democratic and educational goals. However, when it came to the question of opera at the National Theatre, he abandoned his guiding principles devoted to modern European standards. Grol thus reinterpreted his firm political basis in the field of partisan clashes and appropriated the power to regulate the repertoire of the National Theatre; yet, for all that, he never gave up his primary vocation of a writer and dramaturge, who saw the presentation of the highest aesthetic achievements of national and European literature as the sole purpose of the institution he managed.