The New Budapest Orpheum Society Goes to the Movies

Cabaret music, especially in the Jewish traditions of the twentieth century, has been inseparable from film since the first talkies and the first English- and German-language sound films: The Jazz Singer (1927) and Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel, 1930). The cross-fertilization between film and music intensified through the 1930s, with the rise of Yiddish film in Eastern Europe and the cabaret experiments of film composers such as Hanns Eisler and Friedrich Holländer. In addition, the emergence of Hollywood film music followed the exile of directors fleeing fascist Europe. The New Budapest Orpheum Society, the Ensemble-in-Residence in the Division of the Humanities, will bring these film and cabaret traditions to life once again on Humanities Day.