Time to Honor Krenek

One read with pleasure John Henken’s account of the plans of Peter Hemmings and the Music Center Opera to present over the next two years such important but too-little-heard works as “Wozzeck,” “Mahagonny” and “Orlando Furioso” (“New ‘Cosi,’ ‘Wozzeck’ at Music Center Opera,” March 9).

But one looks in vain for a work by Ernst Krenek, composer of 20 music dramas and a figure of major significance in music of this century.

Krenek will be 90 in the summer of 1990, and already his native Austria is preparing to honor him. But though he has lived more than half his life in this country and has been a resident of Southern California since 1947, we continue to neglect him and major milestones in his life have passed with little notice.

Hemmings should stage a Krenek opera in 1990-1991. Portland and Long Beach have shown the way while the Music Center Opera has shown that a company does not have to serve up yet another production of “Faust” to prevail.

Now is the time for it to make ready to honor this distinguished composer and in so doing its own adventuresome self.

JOHN L. STEWART

La Jolla