Available now: Lloyd C. Engelbrecht, Moholy-Nagy: Mentor to Modernism, with essays by Hattula Moholy-Nagy and Regan Brown (DVD Designer), two volumes with a standard play DVD of images only as well as a PDF file of the entire text with hyperlinked images (ISBN: 978-0-615-32366-4). (Click on this hyperlink to download sample Chapter Six PDF)
The book’s accompanying DVD contains all of the 543 black-and-white and color illustrations referred to in the text (including the in text line drawings illustrated in the pages on paper), the full text of the book in Adobe Reader format with links to all of the 543 illustrations, the one-hundred-and-five-page illustrated bibliography of works cited, and sound recordings of Moholy speaking in Hungarian and English. The brief excerpt from The Tales of Hoffmann appearing below on this web page is also on the DVD.
There are also be short film clips: one clip documenting Otto Klemperor speaking of Moholy’s work for the Kroll Opera in Berlin; one clip showing moving images of Moholy’s friend, Ellen Frank; and one clip showing moving images of Moholy himself.
Excerpt from the DVD included with Moholy-Nagy: Mentor to Modernism:
Click play button below to hear a brief audio excerpt from The Tales of Hoffmann:
Information about DVD sound clip 1 from Moholy-agy: Mentor to Modernism:
Jacques Offenbach, “Barcarolle,” from The Tales of Hoffmann, 1881, sung in German as
“Schöne Nacht, du Liebesnacht.” The singers are Willi Domgraf Fassbaender
(1897 1978), baritone, as Niklaus, and Felicie Hüni Mihacsek (1891 1976), soprano, as
Giulietta. The conductor is Julius Prüwer (1874 1943). The orchestra of the Berlin State
Opera plays. The 78 rpm. recording was made in 1929 by Grammophon with a
catalogue number of 66862 and a matrix number of 1639 BM.
This is the historical recording with the closest ties to the “Barcarolle” in Moholy’s 1929 Berlin production of The Tales of Hoffmann at the Kroll Opera. Prüwer was associated with the Berlin State Opera, if only in the recording studio, and he conducts here the sister orchestra to that of the Kroll Opera (the Kroll was officially known as the State Opera on the Plaza of the Republic). Both Domgraf Fassbaender and Hüni Mihacsek sang at the Kroll, but not in The Tales of Hoffmann. The role of Niklaus is usually sung by a woman in the theatre (but not always in the recording studio) although the character is male, or in other words Niklaus is an example of what has come to be known as a “trouser role” for a female opera singer.
For more information on the book, click on Authors page.
In preparation: Lloyd C. Engelbrecht, Rudolph Weisenborn: Pioneer of Modernist Painting in Chicago