The first performance of a stage or piece of music in front of an audience is described as the premiere (abbreviated as U and UA), while the first performance of a film as a premiere and the first broadcasting in broadcasting (for example in the radio play) The title with the first performance is related. In contrast to the premiere, this means the first performance of a musical work or stage piece in a translation. Sometimes, however, the first performance at a different venue – at which the premiere of the work was not held – is also called the first performance (eg “First performance in Berlin”).
The term consists of the noun’s performance, which means the public performance of a stage or piece of music, and the prefix Ur together. In the combination with nouns, partly also with adjectives, the prefix Ur characterizes the starting point of a thing, which is thus at the beginning, as in the words Uroma, Urgestein, etc. Accordingly, a premiere is a performance that begins at the beginning [subsequent performances] and thus is the first of its kind.
If, however, a performance is concerned with the new production of a material, that is, with a way of representation which has not been shown in this form before, the premiere is again referred to as the first performance. For example, the performance play Minna by Barnhelm von Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was premiered in Hamburg on 30 September 1767. If the drama is now staged on any stage and is subsequently to the public performance, one would speak of the new production and the first performance as a premiere.
It is interesting that the concept of the premiere did not appear until the turn of the century between the 19th and the 20th century (see Fin de Siècle). For example, on March 15, 1904, Wilhelm Michel kept the following in the Munich News, a daily newspaper, which appeared between 1848 and 1945:
For example, For example, the fashion word “premiere”, which stands at the tender age of two or three years at most, all the prospect of being incorporated into the permanent stock of language. It is not a new name for a new thing. The thing it means is almost as old as the theater at all. It is therefore a matter of a genuine fashion word, which is distinguished by its scarcity and its happy demarcation against the concept of “original design”.
The above text demonstrates that it was previously customary to describe the first performance of a work as a first performance, and that a distinction between the terms premiere and the premiere was quite late, and that the term premiere, which is nowadays mainly used for film screenings and new productions.