Mannes Opera To Present U.S. Premiere of Korngold’s THE SILENT SERENADE

Mannes Opera at The New School College of Performing Arts will present the U.S. premiere of THE SILENT SERENADE (Die Stumme Serenade), a comic operetta by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, in two performances at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater in New York City. The production will be performed in English with supertitles and will mark the first American staging of the work.

Written in the late 1940s following Korngold’s Hollywood film career, THE SILENT SERENADE is based on a short story by Austrian writer Raoul Auernheimer. The piece was conceived as a Broadway-bound operetta during a period when works such as Regina, The Consul, and Trouble in Tahiti were finding success in Broadway houses, blending operatic structure with theatrical storytelling and popular musical idioms.

Korngold, an Austrian-Jewish composer who fled Europe during the rise of the Nazi regime, built a second career in Hollywood after arriving in the United States. He became one of the most influential film composers of the Golden Age, winning Academy Awards for Anthony Adverse and The Adventures of Robin Hood. Although THE SILENT SERENADE was intended for Broadway, a troubled early production history—including an abandoned Shubert Brothers run—led the work to fall largely out of the repertoire.

The Mannes Opera production will be directed by Emma Griffin, Managing Artistic Director of Mannes Opera, and conducted by Cris Frisco. Griffin said, “Korngold's operetta has the feel of a 1930s or '40s Hollywood musical, with a sparkle and sense of delight that's both theatrical and musically irresistible. There's a real thrill in working on a piece so clearly designed to engage and enchant an audience. You can feel Korngold's years of collaboration with Max Reinhardt in his instinctive understanding of what works on stage. Join us for this exquisite concoction by one of the 20th century's greatest composers!”

The performances will take place on March 13 and March 14 at 7:00 p.m. at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College, located at 524 West 59th Street in Manhattan. The production concludes Mannes Opera’s 2025–2026 season, which also includes works by Kaija Saariaho and Ferruccio Busoni and features productions directed exclusively by women.

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