Adolf Hitler's assumption of power destroyed this thriving operatic scene. Ironically, after the burning of the Reichstag in 1933, the German seat of the government was moved to the Krolloper, the state opera house in Berlin which, under the adventurous directorship of Otto Klemperer, had seen the premieres of many innovative works of the 1920s, including Hindemith's "Neues vom Tage". Now Hindemith responded to the advent of the Third Reich with his chief work "Mathis der Maler", a portrait of an artist trying to survive in hostile times. It received its premiere in Zürich in 1938, since all performances of Hindemith's music had been banned in Germany the previous year. In 1940, Hindemith left Switzerland for the United States, joining a transatlantic exodus of composers which included Schoenberg, Weill, Korngold and Zemlinsky. Schreker had died in 1934, having been dismissed from his teaching post by the Nazis; other composers, such as the promising Viktor Ullmann, would perish in the death camps. Some opera composers, including Carl Orff, Werner Egk and the ageing Richard Strauss, remained in Germany to accommodate with the new regime as best they could.