|
|
| go to lobby page | more reviews | go to other departments | GLENN LONEY'S SHOW NOTES
[01] Successful Second Season for Baden-Baden Festival
DEATH IN BRABANT--Knights mourn slain villain in the Kirov Opera's fantastic production of Lohengrin. Photo: Copyright © Meinrad Heck—1999.
[02] Kurhaus Casino Entertainments
[03] Valery Gergiev & the Kirov
[04] Kirov Forza del Destino
[05] Kirov's New Lohengrin
[06] New Lohengrin at Bayreuth
[07] Bayreuth Reprises of Tristan, Dutchman, & Meistersinger
[08] Nuremberg's 950th Birthday
[09] Waiting for the Millennium RING
[10] Question of Wagnerian Succession
[11] The Berlin-Bayreuth Axis
[12] Berlin's Traditional Musical Theatre
[13] New Musical Theatre Berlin
[14] Disney's Berlin Glockner von Notre Dame
[15] Weimar as Europe's Culture City 1999
[16] Love & Intrigue in the Original German
You can use your browser's "find" function to skip to articles on any of these topics instead of scrolling down. Click the "FIND" button or drop down the "EDIT" menu and choose "FIND."
How to contact Glenn Loney: Please email invitations and personal correspondences to Mr. Loney via Editor, New York Theatre Wire. Do not send faxes regarding such matters to The Everett Collection, which is only responsible for making Loney's INFOTOGRAPHY photo-images available for commercial and editorial uses.
How to purchase rights to photos by Glenn Loney: For editorial and commercial uses of the Glenn Loney INFOTOGRAPHY/ArtsArchive of international photo-images, contact THE EVERETT COLLECTION, 104 West 27th Street, NYC 10010. Phone: 212-255-8610/FAX: 212-255-8612.
For our archive of Glenn Loney's previous 1999 columns, click here.
Music Theatre: Baden-Baden, Bayreuth, & Berlin!
Bonus: Goethe's Weimar—Europe's Culture-City 1999
Successful Second Season in Baden-Baden
After an almost disastrous initial season, the Baden-Baden International Festival has made an astounding comeback—in only a matter of months. In July 1998, the Festspielhaus was giving away tickets to anyone who asked to see the Kirov Opera.Although a state-of-the-art opera, drama, dance, and concert-house had been built into the facade of an impressive Victorian railroad station, the initial planners had no idea how to fill their magnificent new theatre.
And Valery Gergiev's Kirov Opera and Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra were not the only notable performance ensembles they had programmed. In July 1999, however, people were clamoring for tickets to the Kirov's splendid new production of Richard Wagner's Lohengrin.
The response to the artists from St. Petersburg has been so encouraging that an on-going relationship between the Baden-Baden Festival and the Kirov is envisioned. With a regular summer season presented by Maestro Gergiev, his orchestra, chorus, and soloists.
REWIND TO 1998: Here's what your reporter wrote, surveying the scene then:
The Baden-Baden Festival would have done well to begin more modestly, using existing performance venues, and building gradually on the foundations of earlier music festivals in the city.
The planners of the Festival Theatre didn’t really study the demographics. Nor create imaginative advance-advertising and devise the sound marketing strategies necessary to attract large and interested audiences.
Politicians and Planners willed the Festival and its Theatre on Baden-Baden. Without making any real effort to win the support of the local citizens: hoteliers, health-care experts, crafts-people, office-workers, shop-keepers, laborers, and professionals.
I came on the frantic backstage scene just as the new Press Chief, Uwe Jakobs, was preparing to hold a press-conference. Valery Gergiev and his Kirov Opera and Orchestra would open a week’s engagement only two days hence.
But advance sales had been so disappointing that the new management—representing the City of Baden-Baden’s interests—was offering every seat in the house absolutely free for the Kirov engagement!
All local citizens had to do was write in a request. Those who had already paid would get their tickets free—and the money previously paid readily refunded!
This may not seem an effective way to recover from virtual bankruptcy. Or to make enough of a profit to pay off the considerable remaining costs of the new theatre. But that was not the immediate management goal.
Instead, the object was to get Baden-Baden inhabitants from all walks of life—as well as spa-patients and tourists—acquainted with and interested in the theatre and its upcoming programming.
One of the basic rules in launching a festival—or opening a new non-profit theatre—is that it has to have the enthusiastic support of most of the local citizens. Or it is not going to survive, let alone prosper.
You cannot gratuitously dump a festival on a community which has not been consulted. And convinced.
The new management is trying to make up for the costly mistakes of those who have been dismissed. And it’s not going to take only a few months to repair relations and attract support at all levels.
But Baden-Baden now has a beautiful, acoustically-admirable new Festival Theatre. Complete with all kinds of amenities for state, community, and private events and celebrations.
It was widely reported that the new theatre—which originally was supposed to be self-supporting—was eagerly discarded by its creators for the sum of 1 DM. The building, of course, still has to be paid for.
It cannot be boarded-up. Or torn down—not so soon after its splashy opening with a horde of VIPs and elegant Eurotrash.
This handsome, spacious theatre has to be made to work. And it has to find both attractions and audiences which make a good match. That’s quite a challenge, of course. But it simply has to be done.
FAST-FORWARD TO JULY 1999: Thanks to the dynamic planning and programming of the new Artistic Director, Andreas Mölich-Zebhauser, both the theatre and the festival are back on track, steaming forward toward new artistic destinations. He's also the festival's CEO, as well as its Intendant.
The Herbert von Karajan Pfingsten Festival—which used to be an important prelude to Salzburg's famed Summer Festival—has been reborn in Baden-Baden. Partly because Salzburg's Wunderkind Intendant, Gerard Mortier, has been erasing all traces of Maestro Von Karajan from his domains.
This past Whitsun—or Pentecost—the festival's nine concerts attracted over 12,000 guests. Notables and celebrities came from all over Europe and abroad. It didn't hurt the box-office that James Levine brought the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. With Placido Domingo, Deborah Voigt, and Olga Borodina as soloists.
Also on hand were Edita Gruberova, Ivo Pogorelich, Gidon Kremer, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and the Orchestre National de France.
Baden-Baden's ingenious new Intendant has scheduled some of the world's most famous orchestras, ensembles, soloists, and dance companies throughout the rest of 1999.
The line-up makes Festspielhaus Baden-Baden look like a year-long festival now. And the programming is by no means elitist, super-sober, or highbrow. No one would argue that Tap Dogs is an elitist entertainment, for instance. Nor Stomp.
Anne Sophie Mutter makes an interesting contrast to Sarah Brightman. As do the Harlem Gospel Singers to Hildegard Behrens as Elektra.
Then there's the distinguished Brit conductor, Sir Simon Rattle, plus Michael Gielen, Seiji Ozawa, and Helmut Rilling. Alvin Ailey's dancers are certainly a contrast to the Mariinsky dancers.
Fortunately for the reborn Baden-Baden Festival, it now has the firm support of the city, its citizens, and the State of Baden-Württemburg. It also has the handsome patronage of such wealthy opera-lovers as Alberto Vilar.
Vilar, an American investment specialist, has been giving the Salzburg Festival $1,000,000 per year for some time now. He funds new opera productions. And he has helped make the American Friends of Salzburg an international support-group akin to the Society of the Friends of Bayreuth.v This may be the reason Baden-Baden will open next spring's Pfingsten Festspiele with Mozart's Idomeneo, a co-production with the Salzburg Festival.
Kurhaus Casino Entertainments!
The Post-Modernist 2,500-seat festival theatre—located "Beim Alten Bahnhof"—isn't the only show venue in the city. Its noble Beaux Artes Stadt-Theater offers a regular season of classic and modern drama, as well as music-theatre.A plaque on its facade reminds both locals and tourists that this handsome house was the site of the premiere of Hector Berlioz's Beatrice et Benedict. In its long history, it has seen many a major artistic achievement.
But—even with the impressiveness of the old and the new theatres—there's yet another entertainment-venue far more famous in Europe's social history. This is the Kurhaus, with its neo-baroque Casino chambers.
In the 19th century, Kings and Emperors—with their entourages—flocked to Baden-Baden for the "Waters" and to "Take the Cure." Aristocrats, social-climbers, and American millionaires swelled the throng.
They sipped restorative Mineral Waters at the Neo-Gothic Kurhaus Pavilion. And they submitted themselves to steam and mud baths at the historic Friedrichsbad and other thermal baths.
They were also drawn to Baden-Baden by the races—as lovers of thoroughbreds still are. And by gambling—as a broad cross-section of the hordes of tourists now are.
The glittering gilt and crystal chambers of the Casino look like stage-sets. The voluptuous gold-leaf decoration of the portal between two large salons even suggests a proscenium arch.
In Baden-Baden's great days of noble gamblers and distinguished musicians—all taking the Cure—this elegant divider did indeed serve as a frame for performers, including Robert Schumann's widow, the brilliant pianist Clara Wieck.
Marlene Dietrich called the Casino the most beautiful in the world. Better than Monte Carlo! It has a history, authenticity, and grandeur that Las Vegas can never hope to match.
But the Kurhaus also has various handsome auditoria and salons specifically for performances of variety, music, and dance. Outstanding popular singers and entertainers are regularly scheduled here.
When I asked to photograph inside the Kurhaus—you cannot do that in the Casino, alas—showing my press-card won me not only permission, but also the grand tour of this impressive establishment.
Every afternoon, there are free concerts before the Kurhaus in an elegant bandshell. The ranks of seniors in their sporty summer outfits are interspersed with backpackers, young mothers with strollers, and entire families. German, English, French, and Italian chatter predominates, but one hears the occasional volley of Russian or outburst of Spanish.
And there's a fabulous Sunday Brunch in the Casino.
Valiant Valery Gergiev and the Kirov:
Fusty Forza But Magnificent MahlerThe last time I was in St. Petersburg, it was still Leningrad. But I've had the opportunity to see some of the finest of the Kirov Opera's productions just the same.
KIROV OPERA CHORUS EATS--A period scene from Verdi's Forza del Destino at the Baden-Baden Festival. Photo: Copyright © Meinrad Heck—1999. At the Met, for instance, I thoroughly enjoyed Mazeppa, Prince Igor, and Ruslan and Lyudmila. In San Francisco, the Kirov Marriage in a Monastery was a total delight.
The Kirov's remarkable presiding genius and conductor, Valery Gergiev, always seems to be in some major capital with his singers, dancers, and orchestra. With the collapse of Communism—and the great subsidies given to artistic ensembles—he apparently needs to do this to keep the Mariinsky Theatre open and his artists at work.
Actually, the Mariinsky ensembles are so large that they can tour and continue to provide regular daily performances back in Petersburg.
Western cynics used to insist that the handsome subsidies formerly given to the arts were designed primarily to demonstrate the superiority of Soviet Culture. That was only a side-effect. The truth is that excellence in the performing arts was greatly appreciated at all levels of Soviet society. And tickets—very inexpensive—were almost always sold out.
That may be one reason so many Russian productions—especially at the Moscow Art Theatre—looked antiquated or just badly worn. Not only were great productions of the past being honored by replicating them, but innovations were also relatively unnecessary with a public clamoring for opera and drama of any kind.
That's not a problem with an orchestral concert. Especially if it's performed in a beautifully decorated and historic theatre.
The Baden-Baden Festspielhaus is hardly historic—though the train-station in front certainly is. But the ultra-modern auditorium—with warm wood-tones, red fabrics, and sparkling crystal—has an excellent acoustic. This is far more important than gilded swirls or neo-classic pillars.
The house's fine resonance was resoundingly demonstrated when Gergiev conducted Gustav Mahler's Second Symphony. This was a rousing, magisterial performance which gave new meaning to the work's other name: The Resurrection Symphony.
It was so powerful in performance that it could well have raised the dead from their slumbers. Everyone in the audience was certainly kept wide awake. But it was disappointing that there were so few in the house. The crowds that turned out for the two Kirov opera stagings really missed a major musical experience.
Verdi's La Forza del Destino
The vocal and instrumental standard of the Kirov Opera was and remains high. But some of its repertory productions look like fugitives from a provincial Victorian theatre.The problem is not just the shabby two-dimensional settings and the unsubtle lighting, but also the stodgy posturing and awkward stage movement of the principal singers.
The great actor-director Konstantin Stanislavsky once tried to train Russian opera singers to act, but none of this apparently rubbed off on the Kirov ensemble.
This production used Verdi's Petersburg version of the definitive score. But this fusty mounting of Forza is not some relic of the late 19th century. It has been staged—not very imaginatively—by Britain's highly [over] praised Elijah Moshinsky.
The settings of Andrei Voitenko—obviously designed for rapid change-over in rep and ease in touring—depend too much on two-dimensional drops and wings, painted to look like 3-D structures and Nature.
There are some interesting attempts to provide an unusual angle or a colorful suggestion of a vibrant locale, but these are undermined by the painting and the flat-construction.
Even Peter J. Hall's "period" costumes seem copies from stock outfits or some pedestrian History of Costume.
The revenge plot of the opera is itself fusty enough, not to overlook the low comedy of Fra Melitone doling out soup to the poor. Even the overtones of mixed-marriage fears are dated now: "Would you want your sister to marry an Inca, even if he's a prince and the last of his line?"
These plot-lines invite noble posturing, agitated suffering, and buffoonish clowning.
Nonetheless, the singing was outstanding. Notable were Galina Gorchakova's Leonora, Nikolai Putilin's Don Carlos, Gegam Grigorian's Don Alvaro, and Elisabetta Fiorillo's Preziosilla. Gianandrea Noseda—not Gergiev—conducted.
A Mysterious, Magical Kirov Lohengrin
Richard Wagner based this masterpiece of Music-Theatre on medieval romances. They in turn were based on a mixture of history and legend. One of the most notable aspects of the story is the mysterious appearance of the Grail Knight Lohengrin, sailing down the River Scheldt in a Swan-Boat.He has come at the call of the luckless and clueless heroine, Elsa, Princess of Brabant. She is accused of murdering her younger brother, Duke Gottfried, who has vanished. The power-hungry Count Telramund and his sorceress-wife Ortrud demand her death so they can seize power.
Before they can carry out their evil plans, King Henry the Fowler arrives with his army of Saxons, to rally the soldiers of Brabant to battle. Brabant is effectively leaderless. So he has to preside over the ensuing events, leading to personal tragedies for all the main characters.
What only Ortrud knows—and audiences who have read the program—is that she has transformed the ducal child Gottfried into a swan. And it is this swan which brings Lohengrin to Elsa's rescue. He even has a famous aria saluting this obliging fowl: "Mein lieber Schwan."
Wagner himself was very specific about the Swan-Boat, but in recent years, it has become an embarrassment for directors and designers. The majestic white swan is clearly a symbol, a metaphor, so it has often been replaced in modern productions with shafts of light or similar abstract devices.
Valery Gergiev's new Kirov Opera production is magical and mysterious, but its solution to the apparition of the Swan and the restoration of Gottfried unfortunately is not.
Inspired by the fantastic sketches of Evgeny Lysyk, set & costume designers Okasana Zinchenko and Tadei Ryndsak have created a stage-environment which is an intricately detailed vision of Gothic gone mad. It is a marvelous mixture of Medieval and Sci-Fi Futurism.
This is one set you can look at for far more than fifteen minutes, if you are getting bored with the action on stage. But it doesn't work against the action at all.
Instead it provides a fantastic and colorful frame for a fable which is akin to fanciful Russian folk-tales. To emphasize this, the designers have given the richly ornamented costumes a medieval Russian feeling.
Lohengrin doesn't arrive in a Swan-Boat here either. Instead, spectators see a pale boy in a white gown covered with swan-feathers. He returns at the close, sheds the gown, and is revealed as the enchanted young duke.
Not much swanning! This makes a very poor contrast with the rest of the production. It is, however, something which can be changed. Made more mysterious and magical, perhaps?
The stage is filled with several series of steps, so movement is often upward and downward, with a grand sweep of pageantry—which diverts attention from shortcomings in acting.
Because the Kirov needs to tour, the decors are painted on translucent materials which can be compactly packed and shipped. Lit from behind, they become even more mysterious.
The fantastic architecture embodies many arches and spires, many globes and cones. Spheres are sheltered in the arches, some of which look like San Marco in Venice. The sexual symbolism of the male spires and the female eggs is abundantly clear.
If any spectators miss the point, the stairs are flanked with three-dimensional tall thin spiky cones and various sized spheres, increasing in number as the drama progresses.
To prevent the production from looking like an old-fashioned drop-and-wing staging—of which the Kirov has a large repertory—there are three-dimensional squared metal frames flanking the stairs. These are filled with branches and colorful Christmas Tree balls. A similar horizontal frame-element forms a portal for the wedding-scene.
Smoke may be hazardous to singers' throats, and there's far too much of it on stage too often during the production. It's meant to heighten mystery, but with inadequate tour-lighting, it only suggests there's a fire under the stairs.
Stage-director Konstantin Pluzhnikov marshaled his forces well, considering the ranks of stairs on which most of the action occurred. Posturing was almost enforced by the set.
But he did try for some innovative effects, opening up interpretations of the malign forces at work against Elsa and Lohengrin. To undercut the audience's customary romantic reactions during the Wedding March, he had one of Elsa's bridesmaids stabbed!
There were other telling, if minor, details in gesture, movement, and interaction which gave this old legend and familiar score new dimensions. The production could use some more work on these physical aspects to make them more powerful.
Viktor Lutsiuk was outstanding as Lohengrin—a really young, handsome, heroic figure—with a powerful voice. He's sure to become better known very soon. He might even become an operatic sex-symbol. There's not much competition currently.
His Elsa was the understandably mystified but adoring Tatyana Pavlovskaya
Edem Umerov was stalwart in his evil as Telramund. Makvala Kasrashvili's Ortrud was a fearsome opponent to Elsa. Gennady Bezzubenkov was an admirable King Henry the Fowler.
This Kirov Lohengrin had its German premiere at the Baden-Baden Festival, following earlier premieres in Petersburg and in Ravello, where Wagner vacationed. It is sure to be toured to the U. S. before long.
Bayreuth's New Look at Lohengrin:
Given the amazing unit-set designer Stefanos Lazaridis just created for Bohuslav Martinu's Greek Passion at the Bregenz Festival, a wonderfully colorful, medievally romantic Lohengrin seemed a welcome possibility for the new Bayreuth staging by director Keith Warner.At the reception after the Passion premiere, Lazaridis told me that Wagner Festival regulars would see something quite different: "It's a wasteland, a total wasteland. Like T. S. Eliot's Wasteland."
Eliot's notable poem recycled another medieval romance: the fable of the Fisher King. The king is dying—and his land is dying along with him. It's interesting that this legend is linked to the Lohengrin tale.
The land can only be saved by a pure young knight who will find the Holy Grail. And it is only on view to the select few at Lohengrin's father's castle, Montsalvat. For the record, his father is Parsifal—or Percival. Percy for short.
Lazaridis is fascinated by the Lohengrin legend and by Wagner's operatic version of it. "Of all Wagner's operas, it is the only truly tragic one. In Tristan, Dutchman, The Ring, there is redemption. Reunion after death. Not so here. Everyone loses. There is no hope at the end, at least for the main characters."
Director Keith Warner didn't want this production to be another medieval evocation anymore than Lazaridis did. Warner points out that Wagner was deeply interested in the philosophical theories of Hegel when he composed this opera.
Hegelian dialectic emphasized the strong contrasts of Thesis and Anti-Thesis. These contrasts are clearly demonstrated in the pairings of characters in Lohengrin: Lohengrin & Telramund, Elsa & Ortrud. So Warner and his designers decided to set the opera suggestively in Wagner's time, not in the Middle Ages.
Sue Blane's costumes, therefore, are a far cry from those she created for The Rocky Horror Show. Or for Disney's new musical in Berlin: Der Glockner von Notre Dame.
The women of Brabant wear long black Victorian gowns with slight bustles. The evil Ortrud stands out, but only slightly, in her handsome black riding-costume.
QUASIMODO & FRIENDS--The Hunchback gets advice from a Gargoyle in the Berlin premiere of Disney's Glockner von Notre Dame. Photo: Brinkhoff/Mögenberg for STELLA. When she sheds this, her purple and violet gown is still very subdued. Elsa—as the personification of injured innocence—wears pure white when she removes her black cloak.
King Henry is the only character with rich medieval garb. His soldiers, however, are dressed in full period armor for ceremonial confrontations. Warner and Blane wanted them to suggest a Victorian vision of an historic past. In one memorable scene, soldiers stand in a semi-circle, with only their long, dully glowing shields and faces illuminated.
Representing a kind of 19th century reality—in contrast to the Saxons—the men of Brabant wear long black coats, even longer than those featured in the film Matrix.
As in Munich, the upstage is a neutral dark gray or brown. When a dim sun appears in this hazy sky, it is soon swallowed up in a Total Eclipse. On August 11, this actually occurred outside the theatre. Talk about topicality!
Lazaridis' Wasteland is barren and desolate. It consists of two small hills or mounds, each with dead tree branches, and a linking slope between. In the foreground, there is a small, stagnant pool. This does not sound promising for one of the most powerful Wagner productions ever seen at Bayreuth.
But Lohengrin is not about fairy-tales and colorful pageantry. It's about the violent contrasts of good and evil, of aspiration and intrigue, of hope and despair. For Lazaridis, the vicious and scheming Ortrud and Telramund are the other sides of Elsa and Lohengrin's natures: Yin and Yang.
Considering that there's almost no color in this production, it is amazing that it is so visually powerful. Every stage-picture is memorable.
Even without knowledge of German—there are no supertitles at Bayreuth—thanks to the designers, director, and singers, the development of the action is quite clear. This would be an amazing production even without the words—played in dumbshow with Wagner's potent music.
When King Henry arrives with his Saxon army, they don't just march on. Instead, an immense stage-wide elevator descends from the flies, bearing two long rows of soldiers clad in full armor and in full voice.
This two-level platform—moved by a system of pulleys—can hold 40 choristers in armor—with the king enthroned in the center. This elevation also serves to distance them historically, making them almost ghostly.
Later this effect is repeated and magnified by having three rows of fully armored knights—36 in all—suspended above this elevator and its double-row of soldiers. These figures are dummies—but the optical impression is overpowering.
Using a specially constructed machine, Lazaridis has created a central square stage-space which appears between the two mounds. It can revolve, incline, move up and down, and disappear, all of which it does with great effect.
At one point, it slants down toward stage-right, one corner aimed at the audience. From its four sides, small platforms slide out, forming a kind of cross. With Elsa in the center, the King, Ortrud, Telramund, and Lohengrin confront her on all sides.
For Elsa's wedding-preparations, a long drawbridge descends from downstage right, joining the platform extension. She is asleep on the center platform, surrounded by a swan-like swath of cloth.
It's her bridal veil, which is then held high aloft by her maidens on the long incline toward upstage left. Soon, another drawbridge descends upstage, disappearing into the wings, with a long shaft of white light shooting down this long slope.
Manfred Voss's lighting is masterful, especially as it is so sparingly used. There is a great deal of silhouetting, of striking backlighting. Even with a stage full of people, one character can be instantly isolated. Even dim footlighting is highly effective.
Warner and Lazaridis have ingeniously avoided the clichés of staging the famously pompous Wagner "Wedding March." It begins forebodingly with Ortrud and Telramund silhouetted against an immense revolving black cube.
The cube disappears into the flies to reveal the central square. A Victorian chair and a chaise—earlier used by the villains—are the only wedding-chamber furnishings. No bed at all. A white square is surrounded by a moat of real water.
When all hope is lost, the square tilts almost vertically and spills the water into the little pool in the foreground. Into which Lohengrin soon descends, never to be seen again.
Lazaridis says: "The swan is only a metaphor." So it's no surprise to see no Swan-Boat. When Lohengrin does appear, he comes through a blazing cleft in the hazy background—two immense doors, which immediately disappear again.
At the close, however, metaphor is thrown overboard. Young Gottfried appears upstage with a dead white swan in his arms. He descends the mountain for the resolution of this tragedy.
With Lohengrin gone forever, Elsa gives her brother the symbolic Horn, Chain, and Ring, left her by her lost beloved. Historically, these are the heraldic emblems of the House of Cleves.
Duke Gottfried mounts the central summit of the Wasteland, silhouetted against a dull red sun, holding Lohengrin's sword aloft.
Keith Warner is dubious about Gottfried's restoration as a new hope for Brabant. It may be only Wagner's sop to audiences after such a bleak four hours of unmitigated tragedy.
Unlike the fabled Grail Knight who heals the Fisher King's dying land, the real Gottfried was Bad News.
Warner notes: "The historical Godfrey de Bouillon undertook a Crusade to Jerusalem, which resulted in the torture and deaths of 50,000 Jews."
Antonio Pappano conducted a strong cast which featured newcomer Roland Wagenführer as Lohengrin and the radiant Melanie Diener as Elsa. John Tomlinson was a magisterial König Heinrich.
Gabriel Schnaut's scheming, deceitful, vicious Ortrud seemed evil incarnate, and her voice gave a special edge to her malevolence. Jean Philippe Lafont was an adequate Telramund, but not in her class. But then this character is essentially a loser anyway, a medieval Belgian Macbeth, if you will.
This Lohengrin will be on view again next summer. In the meantime, the Lohengrin Thermal Springs have opened in Bayreuth. You can drink the warm medicinal waters which have curative powers or can help "merely in reducing stress" according to the brochure.
Standing for hours outside the Festspielhaus with a sign "Suche Karte"—I'm seeking tickets—is bound to be stressful. So a visit to the Lohengrin Therme may be just the ticket for you. They also have grotto showers, hay baths, and the famed Cleopatra bath.
Reprising Heiner Müller's Tristan,
Despite the extravagant praise heaped on the late Heiner Müller from the West, when he was the star dramatist of the DDR, he was no Bertolt Brecht. Nor were his excursions into directing as cutting-edge as reviews might lead you to imagine.
Plus Dieter Dorn's Dutchman,
And Wolfgang Wagner's MeistersingerOpera certainly was not his forte, but he could hardly turn down an invitation to direct Tristan und Isolde at Bayreuth.
With the collapse of Communism and the Berlin Wall, his purported genius was now in a very exposed position. Especially at the Berliner Ensemble—newly purged of its real Brechtians—where quality and innovation spiraled steadily downward.
His and Bayreuth's good fortune was, as usual, to have fine singers who were willing to work for much less than elsewhere. Wagner recently noted that leading roles are paid a third of the fees in other major houses.
Müller was also fortunate to have Erich Wonder as his set-designer. Wonder's hazily glowing abstraction of a ship-deck in Act One was a suggestive marvel. It also dressed the stage in such a way that singer-movement could be minimal.
Wonder made his director's task even easier in Act Two. It was set in a vast blue Armory, crammed with rows of gleaming breastplates. These could, thanks to Manfred Voss's lighting, subtly change color: blue, silver, gold, red.
But they were so close together that there were only several narrow aisles provided for the singers to move in. For directors who have no idea what to ask opera-singers to do in terms of stage-movement, this could be a godsend.
The Third Act had the dying Tristan flopped out on a huge decaying armchair. It was the only furniture in a vast room cluttered with oddments of trash. From an overhead skylight, a thin white line of light crept down the wall and across a front scrim. This would vanish and then begin again.
Was this a symbol of Tristan's failing life-systems? When the vocal death-throes grew repetitious, the line of light offered some unusual diversion.
Daniel Barenboim, very popular in Bayreuth, conducted. Waltraud Meier was a passionate Isolde, thrilling in the Liebestod. Siegfried Jerusalem—who sometimes has problems sustaining heavy Wagnerian roles to their doomed closures—was a stalwart Tristan, even in his extended third-act dying.
Matthias Hölle was a furious King Mark, with Poul Elming as his vengeful Melot. Falk Struckmann was a strongly voiced Kurwenal, defending Tristan. Brangäne was Lioba Braun.
Like Müller's Tristan, Dieter Dorn's Fliegende Höllander was revived from a past season. This is well worthy of repeated revivals, for, thanks to the collaboration of Dorn and his designer, Jürgen Rose, it is a Post-Modernist surrealist exploration of the neurotic needs driving the central characters.
Using bold basic colors and large simple geometric forms and outlines, Rose gives the old tale of the cursed sea-captain an almost childlike Art Deco look. The shimmerings of yards of pleated red silk rising aloft on poles, like great mysterious fans, magically suggest the sails of the doomed ship.
Creepy-crawly black-clad creatures with soiled ruffs suggest that the cursed crew is not dead, but Undead for centuries.
The most astonishing effect—when this production premiered—was the levitation of Daland's home, a pretty little yellow room with a chair, a bridal gown, and a picture of the Dutchman on the wall.
When Senta and the Dutchman came together, the room rose silently in the air. It descended and they stepped out. Then it rose again and completely revolved, with all the props on stage remaining exactly in place.
Rose has recycled this effect, with some variations, in the new Munich Freischütz. Later this season, he and Dorn will be bringing their Munich Tristan to the Met. This is so avant-garde and jokey the Met's Perfect Wagnerites may never recover.
Peter Schnieder conducted sensitively, with Cheryl Studer straining a bit as Senta, but Alan Titus splendid as the Dutchman. Hans Sotin, who has formerly been so strong, even definitive, as Daland must have been having a bad night. At times, one feared he would have to stop altogether. He didn't seem to have the breath to complete some phrases.
As is always the case—except in those few Wagner operas without chorus—Norbert Balatsch worked wonders with the pick-up chorus in a matter of weeks. It is a great loss that Balatsch is retiring after so many years of splendid work at Bayreuth.
But we all said the same thing when his predecessor, Wilhelm Pitz, retired. Who could achieve what Pitz had been doing for years with singers who came together only briefly in the summer from other opera-houses? In the event, Balatsch may have been even better than his master.
I did not again see Wolfgang Wagner's sedately symbolic Parsifal production, but I was delighted to have the opportunity to see his marvelous Meistersinger for the third summer in a row.
Barenboim again conducted, as with the 'Tristan. Emily Magee was charming as Eva, but her young Von Stolzing, in the person of Robert Dean Smith, who sang it last summer as well, still needs to grow in the role. Endrich Wottrich was a lusty, dynamic young David.
Oddly, owing to her initial sober black gown in church, Birgitta Svendén's Magdalena seems too old for David in this production. Successive costumes get younger, but she still suggests his mother.
The lynchpin of this opera, however—musically, philosophically, emotionally, and dramatically—is Hans Sachs. If he's not strong, charismatic, good-natured, insightful, and humane, the entire structure begins to fall apart. Robert Holl has proved a good Sachs in the past, but this summer he seemed to have real difficulty, and not only with higher tones.
Andreas Schmidt was properly spiteful and envious as Beckmesser. He manifested his neuroses and quirks very amusingly both in voice and in body-language.
Because the physical production showed no great changes from the summer of 1998—though there were some changed details—I'd like to recycle my description of it:
Wolfgang Wagner has had the interesting idea of greatly simplifying the large-scale scenes, presenting them in stylized environments.
Indeed, the first and the final scenes—one in a church sanctuary, the latter on the festival meadow—seemed to be set in an elemental raked semi-circle, with tiered benches and stools.
The chaotic second-act Midsummer's Eve did have vestigial houses for Hans Sachs and Eva Pogner, but they were more suggestive than practical.
The more intimate scene in Sachs' Schuhster-Stube was played in a fairly small room—set in a black void—with white walls and ceiling, translucently glowing with light. All furniture was simply formed, along medieval lines, in unpainted white wood.
For the three more spacious scenes, Wagner has provided three huge projected images. They are thrown on an enormous curved rear-projection cyclorama, dressed on the stage below it by set-props and singers in costume.
On the projection-grid—which suggests a Global Universality in this tale of Medieval Nuremberg—the first act has an enlarged and unchanging suite of medieval manuscript illuminations. Possibly from an actual Meistersinger text?
The second projection represents many steep tiled roofs. The final projection evokes a lustily green-gold leafy Nature.
The overall effect in performance—with the joyous music and these evocations of history, humanity, emotions, and environment—is a magnificent celebration of life.
Nuremberg Celebrates Its 950th Birthday—With Meistersinger
The middle of the Millennium Year is Nuremberg's 950th Birthday! It will be officially celebrated on 16 July 2000.From 16 June to 6 August, there will be a very special Meistersinger Festival. This will include a splendid new production of the opera—for the 21st century—in the newly restored great Nuremberg City Theatre. Wolfgang Brendl and Bernd Weikl are among the stars promised.
But Hans Sachs and his singing guildsmen will be honored in other ways as well. One sure-fire crowd-pleaser promises to be the jazz-series, "The Master-Swinger."
As an ancient and Free Imperial City, Nuremberg is presenting itself as a City of Peace and Human-Rights, with a variety of special programs and exhibitions.
But the City Fathers are not forgetting that it was also the site of the annual Nazi Party Rallies. The remnants of the fascist monuments used in the rallies will be put in sharply critical context.
Even before the gala Silvesternacht—or New Year's Eve—celebrations, the Millennium will be saluted with the annual Nuremberg Christkindl Markt. Homemade gingerbread and handmade toys, for which the city has been famed for centuries, will be on sale in candlelit booths in the medieval market-place.
Yes, there's email [stadtjubilaeum@nuernberg.de] and a website: www.stadtjubilaeum.nuernberg.de
Waiting for The Millennium RING
There are lots of surprises awaiting us when the Millennium arrives.The World won't come to an End. It didn't during the Total Eclipse of ll August. And it won't on 1 January 2000 AD. Nostradamus was wrong.
But there will be a great World's Fair in Germany's Hanover. And a new Wagnerian Ring in Bayreuth.
You can book your hotel-rooms in both cities now. But, although you won't have any difficulty getting tickets to the Fair, your chances of seeing the new Bayreuth Ring are very slim.
That's because there are now at least 100 applicants for every seat for every performance during the deliberately limited five-week Bayreuth summer festival season.
The past few seasons—between Ring productions—chances were improved by the possibility of getting a seat for a single performance.
The Ring, however, is a cycle of linked mythic operas, lasting four days and some sixteen hours. Richard Wagner and his descendants have always wanted festival guests to experience the entire cycle. Not just one or two of the operas.
That means those who get Ring tickets will have a block of four, greatly reducing the possibilities of single seats for single performances.
Customarily, there are three cycles, which means twelve performance-days are required. And, because the operas are so taxing for singers—not to mention some spectators—there are two days free between Die Walküre and Siegfried and between that and Götterdämmerung.
The last Ring Cycle was innovative, colorful, Post-Modernist, exciting. It was designed by the gifted artist Rosalie—the first time ever a woman had ever been invited to create sets and costumes for The Ring.
It is a monumental and very expensive undertaking to mount four major operas and premiere them in one week. Most opera-houses stage their Rings one per season until they have the entire cycle in rep.
No one wants a recreation of historic Bayreuth productions either. Norse Heroes in horned helmets are out. International opera-houses vie with each other to find new ways to visualize these operas as well.
Seattle has a stunning Post-Modernist set of productions, designed by Robert Israel. San Francisco Opera and the Met have distinctive stagings—with a whiff of historicism. The Arizona Ring is distinguished by its innovative projections.
What will lucky Wagnerites see next July in Bayreuth? Only Festival Director Wolfgang Wagner and other insiders know for sure.
But work on the sets and costumes is going forward, even as you read this.
The noted German director Jürgen Flimm will stage the operas. He is known for ingenious innovations in interpreting both opera and drama.
But the designer is Erich Wonder, whose softly glowing abstracted sets for Tristan were recently on view at the Festival. Will his Ring resemble those?
Or will it be a revision of his settings for the Munich Ring, which seems to take place in a Space-Ship? With Wotan at the controls and the Valkyries arriving on rocket-scooters!
Whatever astonishments Flimm and Wonder have in store, audiences and critics will have to come to terms with them. Bayreuth Rings customarily run for five seasons.
That at least increases your chances of witnessing the new four-part production. Unlike stagings of most operas by other ensembles or theatres, Bayreuth productions pass over into operatic history. Thoroughly documented in recordings, photos, drawings, reviews, texts, and, when possible, videos.
The 1976 Centennial Ring, staged by Patrice Chereau and conducted by Pierre Boulez, has become an opera-video classic.
Will the Millennium Ring become as famous?
Requests for tickets were already pouring in last summer. Critics have to make their requests in October. I must do this before I fly off to the Wexford Opera Festival!
The Question of Wagnerian Succession
Gerard Mortier, Intendant of the Salzburg Festival, is departing in 2001. The Short-List for artistic and/or managerial talents to succeed him is growing ever longer.It has been repeatedly demonstrated that successful festivals need Intendants who are both artistically attuned and adept at raising money and figuring out how best to expend it.
Conductors, however brilliant, usually do not have the skills needed for the job. Nor do most stage-directors, dramaturgs, critics, or theorists.
At Bayreuth, the problem of choosing a successor for the current and long-time Intendant, Wolfgang Wagner, is even more complicated. Or at least some commentators would like to make it so.
Wagner is still a vital, forceful personality at 78. His Meistersinger and Parsifal—which he of course re-rehearses for each season—are still outstanding and much-admired productions.
Some of his critics and some of his relatives, however, would like to see him recede into a "well-deserved" retirement. No one lives forever, not even opera-intendants, it has been noted.
An abrupt break in directorial continuity could be crippling. So Wagnerites hope for a successor to be named and eased into running the festival.
There is also a Very Special Problem at the Bayreuth Festival which does not exist elsewhere. Though Gian-Carlo Menotti did fight bitterly with the Charleston Spoletto Festival board over their refusal to make his adopted son his successor.
When Wagner's grandchildren and heirs transferred Haus Wahnfried, the Festspielhaus, the Wagner Manuscripts, and other artifacts and interests to the Bavarian State, there was apparently an understanding that the Festival should be directed by one of Wagner's direct descendants as long as possible or feasible.
Currently, there are several great-grandchildren waiting eagerly in the wings. Eva was Intendant at Covent Garden—though not a stage-director. Nike writes provocative analyses of her great-grandfather's Music-Dramas.
Weiland Wagner's progeny may well have a claim. But the chances of Wolfgang's own son, Gottfried, seem very slim indeed.
He loses no opportunity to attack his father verbally and in print. As well as to denounce what he sees as Bayreuth's historic Anti-Semitism. This plays very well in Israel, of course.
This past summer, Wolfgang Wagner made it very clear that he is not quite ready to abandon ship. In fact, he won't leave his post until he is sure the funding for the festival is secured.
The customary—and absolutely necessary—state subsidy for the Festival was about to be devastatingly slashed by a Bavarian politician, possibly seeking favor with tax-payers.
Cutting taxes plays very well everywhere, though Bavarians are far more supportive of arts-subsidies than Americans—who have almost none anyway.
It was suggested that the Bayreuth Festival should receive no more subsidy than a provincial Bavarian theatre. Using this financial yardstick, it might get far leas, for state and city theatre perform nightly for ten or eleven months per year. Bayreuth's season lasks just five week.
Wolfgang Wagner told editor Gerd-Dieter Meier that he's planned the Festival into the year 2003. With opera stars and conductors filling engagement-calendars five years ahead, that is common practice for Intendants now.
Unlike the old presidential tradition in Mexico, Wagner cannot make a choice that's absolutely binding on the Bavarian State. But his suggestion will surely carry a lot of weight.
In a summer interview that he and his wife and partner, Gudrun, gave the press, he indicated that he'd already written down his choice and sealed it in an envelope for those who must decide on the succession.
My guess is that the name on the paper is Gudrun Wagner. I first met her years ago when she was a most charming and helpful secretary in the Press Office.
Over the years, she has familiarized herself with every aspect of planning and operating the Festival. As has the Wagners' lovely and talented daughter, Katharina.
It is clear that Wolfgang Wagner would not be able to function as admirably as he does—as artistic director, stage-director, and general manager of the Festival—were she not at his side to see that things get done the way he wishes.
If, however, the Election rests on a son or daughter of either Wieland or Wolfgang—which seems unlikely at present—how will such a Wagner be able to take over without day-to-day experience?
The Berlin-Bayreuth Axis:
In the 1930s, there was much talk of a Rome-Berlin Axis. As if the world revolved around this axis—which gave rise to the phrase, "The Axis Powers," meaning Mussolini and Hitler.There was also a much shorter axis: that linking Berlin and Bayreuth. Major trains ran through Bayreuth from Berlin to Munich. They don't anymore, to the annoyance of both Bayreuthers and tourists.
But the former linkage made it possible for Adolf Hitler to come to the Festival—which he subsidized in the 1930s and during the war. He was also able to drop in on the Wagners at Haus Wahnfried, where he always found a warm welcome from Winifred Wagner.
Her daughter, the late Friedelind Wagner, told me about her adventures in Berlin. Running off from Bayreuth—with sister Verena—for an unexpected call on "Uncle Wolfi," at the Reichs Chancellery.
Friedelind came to despise Hitler, and her book, Night Over Bayreuth, still has the power to excite argument. Winifred—whom I came to know after I had met Friedelind—was quite frank with me about her continuing admiration for Hitler.
She resolutely affirmed that in Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's five-hour filmed interview with her, premiered in Bayreuth in the opening week of the 1976 Centennial. She told me she only consented to make the film-interview to help her beloved grandson, Gottfried, who was working with Syberberg. This cinematic documentary did not endear Gottfried to his father, for obvious reasons.
Now, however, there will be a new and quite different axis running from Berlin to Bayreuth and beyond in Munich. With the removal of the Federal German Parliament from charming but remote Bonn to the true capital city, the arts and performance will blossom as never before.
The opening of the Bayreuth Festival has always been an admirable opportunity for major politicians to show themselves to the public—and, more recently, to the TV cameras.
Coming directly from Berlin—instead of Bonn—it may be all too easy to make a Public Appearance in Bayreuth.
Will that reduce even further the tickets available to the public?
Fortunately, trains and Autobahns run both directions, so Bayreuthers—with luck—may soon be able to hop on an ICE supertrain and be in Berlin in time for a performance at the Staats Oper, the Deutsche Oper, or the Komische Oper.
Or they may well want to see some Music-Theatre?
Berlin's Traditional Musical Theatre:
Opera—despite the three theatres regularly producing it—is not the only entertainment of choice in Berlin. Before the Wall came down, both East and West Berlin had almost matching theatres for opera, musicals, dance, and drama.With the fall of the Wall, that meant there were too many theatres and ensembles for the potential audience. So some, like the famed Schiller-Theater, were decommissioned, their acting ensembles dismissed.
The Schiller was, thereafter, supposed to become a venue of musicals produced on the premises and for touring shows. That didn't work out.
Berlin already had the imposing i>Theater des Westens, the premiere house for touring musicals. And the Metropole/Admirals Palast, specializing in operettas.
I was amazed this past August to find Stomp storming the huge stage of the Westens playhouse. In the East Village, it does quite well on the tiny stage of the Off-Broadway Orpheum.
Are theatre-managers becoming desperate for attractions? Chicago was on its way into Berlin. Could Phantom be far behind?
With the tremendous increase in potential audiences—educated, trendy people, with money to spend, thanks to the influx of government officials and functionaries—what can such theatres offer the public?
More new musicals are obviously needed. [Also in New York and London!]
But there's impressive new competition in Berlin, which should worry established theatres.
Introducing The New Musical Theatre Berlin:
On what was for decades a mined, electrified No-Man's Land between East and West Berlin, today a daunting conglomeration of Post-Modernist high-rise offices and amenities has sprung up.This is Potsdamer Platz, the once and future center of commercial activity. And soon to be an important center of entertainment and recreation.
It already has a massive multiplex theatre and a giant IMAX. With a state-of-the-art shopping-mall and with new smart restaurants, it threatens to eclipse West Berlin's Ku-Damm.
Potsdam Place also boasts one of the largest new theatres built in Germany. This is the Post-Post-Modernist Musical Theatre Berlin. Designed by the Renzo Piano Paris Workshop, it seems immense. Especially its foyer, with a vast expanse of glass and a huge bank of stairs, looking like some geometric sculpture.
It's linked to an equally imposing Casino, with a handsome Bistro as well. Outside, there's a gently inclined stone terrace, with slight steps you can easily stumble over. I fell down, but as I being given press-tickets I decided not to sue.
A Berlin friend of mine, however, fell into the odd-shaped pool at the side, when it was covered with snow. There is no railing, no warning-sign when it snows. She didn't sue either, but she had to buy new shoes.
There are some 1,800 seats, almost half of them rising in steep tiers, so the house capacity looks larger than it really is. On a Tuesday night—often almost dead in Berlin theatres—I was lucky to get two seats way up in the Heavens.
Fortunately, the sight-lines are excellent, as are the acoustics. The elegant loge-seats are the last word in comfort and modernity. Frankly, I believe we saw a more spectacular show from that angle than did those sitting in the orchestra.
As the new Federal Berlin is just beginning to come to life and to grow, there is no danger that the Berlin Musical Theatre will go bust anytime soon. Despite some mocking reviews, its premier show is solidly sold-out. You may just have to fly to Berlin to be the first kid on your block to see this blockbuster of a show.
Supertitles have revolutionized audience understanding and enjoyment of opera in America. But they are proving just as useful in Europe, especially in festival-time, when contingents of spectators may be divided among German, French, Italian, and English-speakers. They are also very effective for dramas performed in languages many in the audience may not understand.
As Music Theatre Berlin's Glockner/Hunchback is sung and spoken in German, supertitles in three or four other languages could extend the run forever. Disney would never have to gut a Broadway theatre to install the complex machinery that makes this show such an unforgettable spectacle.
Of Mice and Men—Der Glockner von Notre Dame:
Some sour Berlin critics—more accustomed to appraising the efforts of major opera stars in the metropolis's three opera houses—were not enchanted by the new Disney musical, Der Glockner von Notre Dame. One even titled his review "Of Mice and Men," borrowing from John Steinbeck.
Hunchback Is No Mickey-Mouse MusicalThe fact that Michael Eisner and his Disney colleagues decided to give their latest Broadway musical its premiere in Berlin—rather than in Manhattan—certainly says something about their optimism regarding Berlin's future. And their faith in mass-market taste, rather than elitist critiques.
Considering the New York reception of the animated film of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, they may have preferred to open the stage-version very, very far out-of-town.
Perhaps they'll also want to buy out the Babelsburg Film Studios of UFA and DEFA, where some world-classics of cinema were once made?
It's high time the German film-industry got into high gear again. Even if it has to run on Hollywood fuels and highways.
After all, Berlin's popular music-theatre—as well as that of all Germany—is mainly fueled by copies of Broadway shows. This time, Berlin has the original, not a copy.
Of course it's inspired by the Disney animated musical film of the same name. And it has music by the Disney house-composer Alan Menken and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz.
There are musical theatre fans who look down on both Menken and Schwartz, but they do win awards—and they keep getting work.
I left the musical cartoon version before the end, for the Disney formulas were wearing thin. So I was totally unprepared for the striking effectiveness of this stage-version.
A few weeks after the film had run its course, you could buy Hunchback dolls at K-Mart for $1. No one wanted to cuddle up at night with an ugly doll. Esmeralda and the Captain, both handsome dolls, were still selling strongly, however.
This confirmed my hunch—excuse the expression!—that Disney had miscalculated in making an edgy, unstable unfortunate, with a gross physical deformity, a kind of hero.
Fortunately, thanks to James Lapine's book and staging—and the sensitive playing of American Drew Sarich as Quasimodo—the Hunchback is now sympathetic, amusing, appealing. Animated cartoons and computer-simulations can't replace genuine humanity!
Lar Lubovitch's choreography and staging of musical numbers is exemplary. Especially as he is dealing with a large cast, which often doubles and triples as monks, beggars, jesters, gypsies, and medieval Parisians.
These actor/dancer/singers also have to leap agilely about on large scenic cubes, which constantly keep rising up from and sinking down into the stage. They could get hurt if they are in the wrong spot at the wrong time.
The dancing and dramatic action are in furious motion most of the evening. Sue Blane has devised some splendidly showy medieval and clerical costumes which enhance rather than inhibit the dancers.
With costumes for the new Bayreuth Lohengrin also on her drawing-board, Blane has done wonderfully imaginative work in creating costumes for Glockner/Hunchback.
Notable are the three singing stone gargoyles on the bell-tower of Notre Dame Cathedral. Initially, they look like plaster casts of gargoyle grotesques. But they come to life and even detach themselves from their surrounding stone.
But Blane has also created distinctive costumes for Commedia dell'Arte players, jolly jesters, solemn monks, ragged beggars, and colorful gypsies. What's more, they are cleverly constructed so changes can be made in an instant.
Designer Heidi Ettinger—who has won many design awards as Heidi Landesmann—has created an animated, mechanized setting that is far more complicated and ingenious than the set for Lion King. But this spectacular show is nothing like that other Disney blockbuster and can hardly be compared to it.
She has to share credit with Jerome Sirlin, however. His sensational and suggestive projections on gauzy drapes and the moving cubes create the effect of both the interior and exterior of Notre Dame, as well as the City of Paris and various specific locales.
The broad, deep stage is divided into a Three-Squared grid—plus two. The nine semi-squares are wider on the edges toward the audience. But the squares are only their top surfaces. They are actually cubes.
Each can rise or sink below stage-level, independently of the others. They can be lit with various colors from inside, but they also provide projection surfaces.
On each side of the upstage row of these cubes, there is an additional cube, to provide bridges into the wings for the players. This highly active stage-mechanism is flanked on either side by another set of vertical Three-Squared grids, but these are empty cells, not cubes.
Sometimes they are filled with haunting silent images of what may be monks or angels. At others, they are used by major players for important scenes, especially when they have to be above the mob or poor Quasimodo.
Usually he can be found high aloft on a cube with his three gargoyle friends. They are comic-relief—and commentators on the action. And they are certainly more tasteful and amusing than that farting warthog in Lion King.
Jerome Sirlin's magical projections can create the vaulted interiors of Notre Dame in an instant. These lofty groins and pillars are, however, totally insubstantial and can fade away in a second.
Viewers can experience vertigo as Sirlin's projections of the exterior of Notre Dame rush up and down the rising cubes. This illusionary scenery is remarkable, the most innovative use of projections yet in a theatre production. Though Sirlin has already pioneered some stunning effects, notably for Phillip Glass and George Coates.
Obviously, relatively few American musical-theatre fans will be able to fly off to Berlin to enjoy this fascinating spectacle. For Broadway, however, a big theatre will be required whose stage can be gutted and rebuilt with the cube-technology.
Ragtime cannot run forever. So the Ford Center—just across 42nd Street from the New Amsterdam and The Lion King—may be ideal for the Manhattan transfer of Berlin's first Broadway musical premiere.
Berlin's Glockner/Hunchback producer, STELLA/The World of Entertainment, is hardly a novice. It has specialized in purpose-built German theatre-hotel-leisure complexes, created for long-runs of major London & Broadway musicals.
Its current brochure urges trips to Hamburg for Cats and Phantom, to Bochum for Starlight Express, to Duisburg for Les Miserables, to Essen for Joseph/Dreamcoat, to Stuttgart for Miss Saigon and Disney's Beauty & the Beast. And you-know-what in Berlin!
Someone is building a special theatre-complex near "Mad" King Ludwig II's fairytale castle of Neu Schwanstein. It's to feature a musical on his life, Ludwig. Glockner/Hunchback press rep Andre Schwartz assured me STELLA wouldn't touch that project.
Actually, STELLA AG and some other theatre entrepreneurs have over-extended themselves with some initially popular shows that did not continue to attract audiences. After all, who wants to see a show in a theatre constructed at an intersection of major Autobahns, merely to make it handy to Audi-owners?
But STELLA has been restructuring, and Glockner/Hunchback is surely going to put it firmly in the black.
Meanwhile, where are all the new, innovative musicals which can replace the Andrew Lloyd Webber Classics when they run out of steam?
In case you want to write for tickets, Musical Theatre Berlin is located at Marlene-Dietrich-Platz 1, D-10785 Berlin. The most expensive tickets are about $100—more from a scalper.
The STELLA TICKETLINE is 011-49-180-54-444. For a show of this importance, there ought to be a website, but I can't find one listed in the press-releases.
Goethe's Weimar: Kulturstadt Europas 1999
In the heart of Weimar stands the German National Theatre. This is a handsome modern Jugendstil building, not the baroque court theatre where Johann Wolfgang Goethe staged his plays and those of Friedrich Schiller.In front of the theatre stands pedestal bearing the images of Goethe & Schiller in bronze. This duo of poetic geniuses transformed the German stage of their day—and gave a new flexibility, luster, resonance, and power to the German language.
This statue has been much copied, even parodied. But busts and statues of Goethe and Schiller now stand in many of the world's cities, including American metropolises.
Goethe and Schiller aren't the only dead white male celebrities still haunting Weimar, however. Even in the darkest days of the DDR, Communist tour-guides were eager to sing the praises of Franz Liszt and Friedrich Nietzsche as well.
There's even a handsome, historic statue of Shakespeare in the palace gardens.
Although a wide range of classicist and cutting-edge avant-garde entertainments have been scheduled for Weimar's year in the spotlight as Europe's City of Culture—and they will continue right up to the end of December—I arrived in between special programs.
Fortunately, the National Theatre was playing daily. And I've found their work always of high caliber when I passed through Thuringian Weimar in the era of the German Democratic Republic.
It may seem odd that this National Theatre is not in Berlin, but it is a theatre of the German Nation because, in its origins, it was the first professional theatre in Germany. And Goethe seems to have been the first really competent German playwright/director/manager.
When it was founded, it was the court theatre of a small but culturally aspiring Duchy. Germany at that time was not united under either a King or Kaiser.
It was a sprawling patchwork of Counties—ruled by Grafen or Counts, Duchies, Principalities, Kingdoms, and Religious Enclaves. Germany became a nation—and an empire—only under Bismarck, in the second half of the 19th century.
That explains why Munich and Mannheim also have National Theatres, but they aren't German National ones. Indeed, some conservative Bavarians would be pleased to secede from Federal Germany and see their land become again a free-standing nation as it once was.
Weimar has no such dreams of a Restored Past, for it has always been living in that past, more or less. Even when plaster was falling off medieval and baroque landmarks in the DDR, they were proudly shown off to the limited number of tourists permitted visas.
Side-trips to the nearby Death Camp of Buchenwald were also obligatory. Walter Ullbricht, Erich Honnecker, and other leading East German Socialists wanted to make sure that foreign visitors—as well as their own people—understood the enormity of what the Capitalist Nazi West Germans had done here.
It seemed that no one who lived in East Germany had any part in the Nazi Party or its atrocities. Everyone inherited the mantle of Socialist Martyrdom from the ardent Communist, Ernst Thälmann—murdered in Buchenwald—and from the internments of their leaders in Nazi prisons.
For the Culture Year, however, Buchenwald has been put center-stage for visits and discussions. What many in the West did not know, however, is that Buchenwald's accursed life as a Concentration Camp continued after World War II. The Soviets used it for a decade to abuse their own enemies.
On the wrought-iron gate of Buchenwald, the letters spell out JEDEM DAS SEINE, which means To Each His Own. Or, as the Nazis interpreted it: You'll Get What's Coming To You.
A special Buchenwald exhibition this year is Leben-Terror-Geist, or Life, Terror, Spirit, dealing with the artists and intellectuals who were imprisoned here. They included Elie Wiesel, Jorge Semprun, Imre Kertész, Bruno Bettelheim, Leon Blum, and the martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
There has also been some concern about the more distant historic past. Are the corpses so nobly interred in the magnificent mausoleum in the center of the city cemetery really those of Goethe and Schiller?
Apparently—according to a news item I found—they are indeed. The Soviets are said to have exhumed them and cleaned their skeletons.
[Under Stalin, Soviet authorities were often kinder to the dead than to the living. In Austrian Eisenstadt, they opened the sarcophagus of Haydn to rejoin his skull—which was in their possession—to the rest of his corpse. After Haydn's death, some Austrian pseudo-scientist, interested in the brain-capacity of geniuses, had the head severed.]
The value of the Authentic—versus the Copy or Reconstruction—has also been examined in a context somewhat different from opening coffins. Goethe's Garten-Haus—where he wrote some of his greatest works—has long been a Place of Pilgrimage in the Weimar Park.
But even periodically renewed historic buildings are ground down by thousands of tourist feet and greasy hands. The original Garden-House looks fine today, but the number of visitors is limited.
Fortunately for the Culture Year's hordes of tourists, organizer Bernd Kauffmann had the idea of constructing an exact copy in the park, not far away from the original. Visitors are asked to think about authenticity. Is the copy—almost exact in every detail—as good as the real thing?
There's even a third Garden-House on display, but this one is computer-created in Virtual Reality. Weimar may have one foot in the Past, but the other is clearly planted in the Future!
The Garden-House replica is so solidly constructed, I thought they'd let it stay in place and save some of the wear on the real one. But no, it's to be dismantled for re-assembly somewhere else. Maybe the Japanese will re-erect it in Kyoto?
Buchenwald is not the only grim survival of Weimar's Nazi past.
Germany's first and short-lived experiment with Democracy—The Weimar Republic—was proposed and ratified here in 1919, in the National Theatre no less. But it was rapidly suppressed by Hitler and his henchmen.
In fact, the Second Nazi Parteitag was held in the National Theatre in 1926, seven years before Hitler came to power. During World War II, Buchenwald inmates were forced to make armaments in the theatre's workshops.
In line with the Nazi's appropriation of historic German monuments and cities to their own propaganda purposes, Weimar was to be reconstructed as an ideal National Socialist center. Just as Hitler had proposed major architectural changes for Berlin, Munich, Nuremberg, Bayreuth, and Linz, in his Austrian homeland.
Fortunately, the war they unleashed on Europe prevented them from achieving their gargantuan goals. But Hitler's favorite architect, Prof. Dr. Albert Speer, had monumental visions for both Berlin and Weimar.
Even today, on the margin of the medieval-baroque center-city, there is still an immense square, flanked by buildings with the Fascist Art Deco colonnades so dear to the Führer's frustrated architect's heart.
Among the interesting exhibitions in sections of these was one on how Weimar would have looked, had Speer had his way. Another dealt with the plight of the culture of that dark time under the Nazis. Not only did Germany deal herself an almost mortal blow in the sciences by persecuting and exterminating Jews, but she also destroyed decades of creativity in the arts.
In the great central Nazi Hall—which the DDR made over into a multi-purpose arena, or Mehrzweckhalle—one entire floor was devoted to the first public display of the remnants of Hitler's Art Collection.
This has been hidden away for years in Munich Customs vaults and is now in the care of the National Museum in Berlin. The collection was discussed on this site last spring by your reporter—who saw it in the vaults some years ago.
The paintings were prefaced by an entrance-avenue covered with scores of sharp black-and-white photos of Hitler in Weimar and mass-meetings of Nazi Weimariners. The people, not the dogs. These disturbing documents are from an archive of period photos taken by an obviously talented woman photographer, who was also an eager supporter of the Nazis.
One critic complained that she had failed to take pictures of human misery under the Nazis in Weimar. He must have missed the point of her life-work.
Another floor was filled with paintings—and a few sculptures—from the 45 years of the DDR. Just as in the Nazi, Soviet, Franco, and Il Duce Dictatorships, the misnamed and misbegotten German Democratic Republic set artistic standards and goals, all of which were propaganda-oriented.
Actually, there are some fairly impressive, even original, works in this show. But they have been deliberately hung helter-skelter, massed on the walls. So something potentially striking is eclipsed by monstrosities on either side.
Titled Aufstieg und Fall der Moderne—Rise and Fall of the Modern—these are only two parts of a tripartite exhibition. Modern masters which Hitler hated are on view in the Schloss-Museum.
This fascinating show has been mounted by the Kunstsammlung zu Weimar. It closes in November, but the huge, richly illustrated catalogue will give it a much longer life. This is a volume every art-library and art-historian will want to have.
To purchase a copy of the catalogue, you can phone the Kunstsammlung: 011-49-3643-546-130/132.
For more information on Kulturstadt Weimar, its publications, and what events remain in the 1999 calendar, call: 011-49-3643-81-9923. Or FAX: 011-49-3643-81-9919.
Love and Intrigue in the Original German
My theatre-evening in Kulturstadt Weimar was intensely spent watching the National Theater's modernist mounting of Friedrich Schiller's Kabale und Liebe, or Love and Intrigue. This intriguing bourgeois tragedy is seldom played in America, but it is beloved of opera fans as Verdi's Luisa Miller.The minute I saw what looked like a giant windshield-wiper on the proscenium scrim, I realized that I'd already seen this provocative production on tour.
Instead of setting poor Luisa's sad story firmly in period—it could have happened in Schiller's own time, in a court much like that of Weimar—director Annegret Ritzel and designer Johannes Leiacker brought it to life in a Black Box, with most of the players in black costumes, somewhat suggesting the period.
The stage-environment—with its black grand-piano, music-stands, and instruments—suggested chamber-music would be played. Because Luisa's unbending father is a court musician, this has an obvious relation to the story.
But it also frees the director and her players to try some improvisations in movements and relationships. This production effectively helps the drama speak to our times as well. Although loving someone beneath—or above—your social-station is not the taboo it once was.
Susanne Storck was a lovely, but understandably troubled, Luise. Bernd Lange played her honest, upstanding father. Harald Schwaiger was deviously "wormish" as the intriguer Wurm.
Schiller's acid portrait of this small-scale meddler and political schemer has made Wurm a by-word in Germany for a scoundrel or trouble-maker. "Ein richtiger Wurm!" is a favorite expletive of older Germans who know their classics. And their scoundrels.
The National Theater's Culture Year repertory also includes Schiller's Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien. Nor is Goethe neglected, with productions of his Urfaust, and both parts of his epic, Faust.
Modern classics from Vienna are represented by Arthur Schnitzler's Komödie der Worte and Karl Kraus's epic social and political satire of Europe before World War I, The Last Days of Mankind.
The Comedian Harmonists has also had a great success, but this is not the Brooklyn-born version, briefly shown on Broadway last year. This is a German recreation of the lives, dreams, and songs of the famed prewar German vocal group. It is also known as Veronika, Der Lenz Ist Da!
Specially commissioned for the Culture Year, authors Christoph Hein and Gert Heidenreich have provided a double-bill of one-acts titled Siegfried und Sieglinde. Hein's is called In Acht und Bann. Heidenreich's playlet is Tubus. Tosca. Maligne.
Tosca is also evoked in another rep staging at the National: Terrence McNally's Meisterklasse der Maria Callas!
This theatre, despite its grand historic tradition, is certainly not living in the past. It also has a dance company led by choreographer Ismael Ivo. Francis Bacon is one of his innovative new works.
There are three months remaining in Weimar's Culture Year. If you are thinking about a fall getaway, this could be a most interesting experience.
Throughout the city, there are attractive modernist modules celebrating various aspects of Weimar's historical, social, and artistic life. With photos, period illustrations, graphics, texts, music, and even voices which speak to you, they bring it all back to life.
After all, this is also the city where the Bauhaus began! [Loney]
Copyright © Glenn Loney 1999. No re-publication or broadcast use without proper credit of authorship. Suggested credit line: "Glenn Loney, New York Theatre Wire." Reproduction rights please contact: jslaff@nytheatre-wire.com.
| home | listings | columnists | reviews | what's new? | cue-to-cue | people | welcome |
| museums | recordings | what's cool? | who's hot? | coupons | publications | classified |
