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The reception of art in the early years of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was governed by two significant factors. The first was the premise that the conditions of state socialism would inevitably yield to a communist utopia. The second was that art would facilitate this evolution by illuminating the seeds for utopian development that already existed both in the GDR and in t*he Germanic cultural heritage more generally. These axioms came together in Georg (György) Lukács’s theory of reflection, which underpinned the Soviet socialist realism that was introduced to East Germany in the wake of World War II. Art, Lukács proclaimed, should provide a depiction “of the subtlety of life, of a richness beyond ordinary experience,” through which it can “introduce a new order of things which displaces or modifies the old abstractions.” Opera was held to be an ideal art form in this context. Despite concerns in other Marxist quarters about its elitist connotations and escapist tendencies, adherents of socialist realism were convinced of its value for East German society. Characteristic was Walther Siegmund-Schultze’s declaration in 1953 that opera, because of its multifaceted nature, had historically “seemed to offer the best conditions for a vivid reflection of all reality.” This perception of opera as a realistic art form found support in the theatrical realism that was championed by Walter Felsenstein at the Komische Oper in East Berlin. Like Lukács, Felsenstein was convinced that art could reveal truths about society that were not accessible through everyday life. Theater, he argued, has the capacity to awaken the connection with the elemental that modern society has obliterated: when modern man “experiences the re-creation of the elemental in the theater, he rediscovers once again the elemental in himself.” Felsenstein’s construct of realism in this context had little to do with mimesis. He was interested not in reproducing the superficial appearances of society onstage but rather in penetrating its surface to reflect deeper truths. In terms of opera, this involved the immersion of the audience in a unified and credible theatrical experience, with the aim of revealing to them a work’s inner meaning. As Götz Friedrich and Joachim Herz explained, Felsenstein’s Musiktheater entailed “the musical and scenic realization of a plot with the goal of translating a work’s

Art as Utopia: Parsifal and the East German Left