Hanne E. F. Nielsen

‘Scott of the Antarctic’ on the German Stage: Reinhard Goering's Die Südpolexpedition des Kapitäns Scott

Reinhard Goering’s play Die Sudpolexpedition des Kapitans Scott (1929) tells the story of the famously tragic British polar expedition led by Robert F. Scott in 1911–12. As the first public staging of the story, the play created considerable controversy in Britain when it premiered in Berlin in 1930. A late Expressionist drama, it offered perspectives on the expedition quite different to those coming out of Scott’s homeland. In this article, Hanne Nielsen and Elizabeth Leane contextualize the play within Goering’s own career; outline its performance history; examine its reception in both Germany and Britain; and analyze the play text in terms of its innovative treatment of Scott’s story.

Scott at the Opera: interpreting Das Opfer (1937)

In November 1937, an unusual work premiered at the Hamburg State Opera. Entitled Das Opfer (“The Sacrifice”), the one-act opera tells the story of Robert F. Scott’s last expedition, focusing on the famous final moments of Lawrence Oates. While the action features only four main characters, a large chorus – dressed for much of the time in penguin costumes – comments on events. The opera was an adaptation of an award-winning and controversial play by the eccentric expressionist poet Reinhard Goering. The libretto was written by Goering, who committed suicide not long after its completion – about a year before the first performance. The score was by composer Winfried Zillig – a student of Arnold Schoenberg and promoter of his radical modernist 12-tone technique. Subsequent descriptions of Das Opfer and its reception have been remarkably varied. Some commentators assert the play was quickly banned by the National Socialists due to its pro-British content and “degenerate” 12-tone score. Others argue that this version of events was invented post-war in order to distance Zillig from the Nazi regime, which actually embraced his work, including Das Opfer. Given that Das Opfer was probably the first professional musical response to Scott’s last expedition, and certainly the first operatic performance of the story, it is surprising that no in-depth contextual account of the work is available. The aim of our research is to provide an analysis of this opera – historical, textual and musical – that is both relevant to an Antarctic studies readership and accessible to English-speaking readers. In doing so, we suggest tentative answers to some questions raised by this intriguing musical work: How was Scott’s expedition, which has so often been tied to ideas of Britishness, adapted for German audiences? And what significance did the opera’s Antarctic setting hold in this context?

Hoofprints in Antarctica: Byrd, media, and the golden Guernseys

Abstract Cows and Antarctica rarely exist in the same sentence, let alone the same region. In 1933 Admiral Richard Byrd changed that, when he took three golden Guernseys to Little America II. These Antarctic cows may have appeared as little more than a footnote in Antarctic history, but their story is revealing of the commercial and media context of Byrd’s second Antarctic expedition. Byrd was a master of what he called “this hero business”, and his second expedition was thoroughly documented via print, film and radio – in the case of the latter, in real time. His decision to take a dairy south was one way of ensuring ongoing media attention. This paper chronicles the cows’ journey to and from Antarctica, placing their story within the context of exploration and sponsorship, in order to highlight a novel way Antarctica has been used as a tool in a commercial context.

Staging the south: two contemporary Antarctic plays

As examples of cultural production, plays and their treatment of imagined Antarctic space can provide valuable insights into how attitudes towards the continent have developed and been expressed, by revealing the dominant narratives at various points in time. In recent years, the traditional focus on Heroic Era narratives has given way to an engagement with environmental issues and the materiality of the place. The current accessibility of Antarctica has led to several site-specific works and multimedia performances that incorporate film footage shot on-site on the southern continent. Taking Mojisola Adebayo’s Moj of the Antarctic (2006) and Lynda Chanwai-Earle’s Heat (2008) as case studies, this article outlines, contextualises and explores recent developments in the representation of Antarctica upon the stage. Together, these plays show how playwrights are engaging with Antarctica in new and exciting ways and treating the continent as part of a global system.