VISUAL TRIUMPH at L.A. OPERA
He...@hotmail.com
"Der Rosenkavalier"
This year the Los Angeles Opera premiered a new production of "Der
Rosenkavalier" by Richard Strauss. Directed by Maximillian Schell
and with costumes, stage and make-up by the Austrian artist Gottfried
Helnwein, the production premiered in Los Angeles on the 29th of May.
It was one of the most amazing experiences I have had at an opera.
Aside from some of the great voices (Kurt Rydl singing Baron Ochs,
Alice Coote singing Octavian and Adrianne Pieczonka singing the part of
the Marschallin), the visual achievement of the opera was so fulfilling
that it finally felt like a complete work of art. Opera, after all, is
at its most ideal a multi-faceted work of art - that is, the visual
should be able to stand up to the musical masterpieces that have been
left to us by the composers. Sometimes, that can seem a little
daunting. Helnwein, however, knows how to take on this challenge. In
this production of "Der Rosenkavalier" Helnwein transforms the
stage and its singers into a bizarre fairy-tale-like dreamscape, where
colors and shapes seem to push the outer limits of the imagination.
There are three acts, each one with its own monochromatic theme - the
first one blue, the second one yellow and the third one red.
Everything from the hair and skin of the singers, to the shoes, the
props, the walls and the floor of the scenes corresponds to that
scene's color (it's surprising how many shades and hues of yellow
there actually are). Helnwein's visuals are a cross between the
innocence and beauty of bygone days, and the nightmares of early
morning hours - as in the red scene, where large portraits of
beautiful women's faces suddenly melt into images of rotting skulls.
Go here to view some actual pictures of what I'm trying to explain:
http://www.helnwein.com/werke/theater/tafel_1.html
Anyway, "Der Rosenkavalier" is indeed a wonderful opera, and
Gottfried Helnwein's weird imagination helps us realize that. Below
are various articles, I've picked out from the L.A. Times and the N.Y.
Times. If the subject is of any interest to you, it might be fun to
read.
DER ROSENKAVALIER
Los Angeles Opera
CREATIVE TEAM
STAGE DESIGN - Gottfried Helnwein
COSTUME DESIGN - Gottfried Helnwein
CONDUCTOR - Kent Nagano
DIRECTOR - Maximilian Schell
CHOREOGRAPHER - Johann Kresnik
LIGHTING DESIGNER - Alan Burrett
DRAMATIC ADVISER - Gernot Friedl
MAIN CAST
Adrianne Pieczonka MARSCHALLIN
Kurt Rydl BARON OCHS
Alice Coote OCTAVIAN
Elizabeth Futral SOPHIE
Robert Bork HERR VON FANINAL
Susan Foster MARIANNE LEITMETZER
Anthony Laciura VALZACCHI
Margaret Thompson ANNINA
LOS ANGELES TIMES:
GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN AROUSES CREATIVE TUMULT.
Must everything be such an opera?
"For me, art is a way to fight back against everything I've
experienced: I wanted to respond, but I didn't know how to articulate
it. But I could paint it. That medium opened all doors. Certain images
can reach so deeply into people's souls.
"And I feel also like a witness to my times - that's my duty, my
responsibility." One role of art, he believes, is to "force people to
look at things they would rather not look at," an impulse he sees in
Goya and Shakespeare.
Compared with some of the other controversies Gottfried Helnwein has
lived through, the dissension over the "Der Rosenkavalier" he designed
for Los Angeles Opera seems like a tempest in a teekanne.
As a student in Vienna, the Austrian-born Helnwein, now 56, was kicked
out of school for creating a portrait of Hitler with his own blood.
Decades later, as a successful artist, he painted a
Renaissance-inspired mural in which an infant Christ is greeted by
three wise men - wearing SS uniforms. The piece nearly led to a
lawsuit by a soldier's widow. In the '80s, an unknown assailant slashed
the throats of the children in the canvas mural; at an art festival in
2001, someone set fire to a girl's portrait.
Helnwein's art, curator Robert Flynn Johnson wrote of a recent San
Francisco show, "is the visual equivalent of a contact sport."
His "Rosenkavalier" will receive its last performance of the season
Sunday afternoon at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion (with Margaret
Thompson stepping in for an indisposed Alice Coote as the love-struck
young nobleman Octavian). But the criticism began even before it
opened, with an ad he photographed showing two fetching young women on
the verge of a kiss. The objections grew louder after audiences got a
load of his whimsically grotesque vision - including monochromatic
sets and minor characters who seem inspired by Dr. Seuss - of an
opera originally set in 18th century Vienna.
Helnwein himself, it turns out, is serious, thoughtful, almost grave;
his temperament and constant sunglasses suggest a Germanic Roy Orbison.
He says he has no urge to shock, but he appears to find controversy
sadly inevitable.
"Great music, amazing singers - for many opera fans that is enough,"
he says, sitting outside his studio in downtown L.A.'s artist district.
"But I believe in the idea of Gesamtkunstwerke, the art that includes
all art. And that means you have visual art, you have directing, you
have choreography, and of course you have the music and the singing.
What makes opera such an interesting art is that everything comes
together."
Some viewers have been captivated by this "Rosenkavalier," only the
second opera for which Helnwein has designed the sets and costumes.
Times music critic Mark Swed called the production "terrific" and
described its look as "sensational." The New York Times was also
enthusiastic.
The Orange County Register, on the other hand, concluded that the
production "has been commandeered by a gum-chewing dandy in a bandanna
and sunglasses. He is the scenery and costume designer and no doubt an
artiste, and someone must have given him the company's American Express
card and said, 'Go to it.' "
Similarly, the Daily News said Helnwein and director Maximilian
Schell's conception "leaches layers of meaning from the opera,
rendering emotionally complex ideas flat and distracting us from both
the music and the less obvious aspects of the drama."
But Helnwein says his unorthodox take on Richard Strauss' 1911
masterpiece, and his use of a single color to dominate each act, came
after he had seen several decades' worth of productions whose bland
sets and "corny, fake rococo costumes" he calls visual "disasters."
In working with Schell - who knew him from the posters he created
for the director's 1984 documentary about Marlene Dietrich - Helnwein
says he sought to be true to the spirit of Strauss but "wanted a piece
you could see was made in the 21st century and made in Los Angeles."
He drew from research into the doomed, extravagant rococo-era Vienna.
"I wanted to have something of that exaggeration as I told the story
visually," he says. "And there's a connection between rococo and the
spirit of this city, of Hollywood. So I wanted to have some elements of
that in the piece. It seems to contradict, but it doesn't really."
Though his paintings of smiling Nazis, retro crime scenes and wounded
children have long given him a reputation for provocation, Helnwein
says his art comes from a psychological need.
"For me, art is a way to fight back against everything I've
experienced: I wanted to respond, but I didn't know how to articulate
it. But I could paint it. That medium opened all doors. Certain images
can reach so deeply into people's souls.
"And I feel also like a witness to my times - that's my duty, my
responsibility." One role of art, he believes, is to "force people to
look at things they would rather not look at," an impulse he sees in
Goya and Shakespeare.
Helnwein was born three years after the conclusion of World War II,
when Austria was still reeling and consumed with guilt and silence.
"In my memory, my childhood was horrible. As a kid, I always felt I'd
landed in the wrong place. If you lose two world wars, and your houses
are bombed, you are not in a very good mood. Everything was ugly and
threatening. People didn't talk. I never heard anybody laugh or sing."
He calls his discovery of Mickey Mouse comics left by American GIs "my
big awakening and revelation.... When I opened my first comic book, it
was like opening a door to a world without boundaries. That's where I
wanted to live. I couldn't read, but I could read the pictures."
He was especially taken by the Donald Duck comics drawn by Disney's
Carl Barks, for whom he would years later curate a touring museum show.
Another jolt: a chewing gum wrapper that included a small picture of
Elvis Presley - "the most beautiful person I had ever seen."
"America became this myth for us, because there was nothing we could
identify with in our parents' generation: It culminated in the
explosion of the '60s. We didn't want anything to do with their culture
or their crimes or their fascistic past. I believed in comics and rock
'n' roll."
The other key influence on the budding artist was Roman Catholicism.
"The only art I saw as a kid was the art in the churches. They were
usually torture scenes, people nailed and cut into pieces, sacred
corpses. I was scared - I had nightmares - but I was fascinated, of
course. "People who come from Roman Catholic countries have as their
heritage millions of pictures. And Puritan or Protestant countries,
especially when they're Calvinistic like America, are very different."
Helnwein says he always felt out of place, like a Gypsy, even after
leaving Austria to settle in Germany. So in the '90s, after visiting
rural Ireland largely on a whim, he decided to relocate there and in
New York. Then, in 2002, he moved his TriBeCa studio to downtown L.A.
Upon arriving here, he wasn't sure his photorealist painting and
painterly photography would be welcome in a city dominated by
entertainment. But he found a public and fell for L.A. "I love it for
everything - the corniness, the ugliness and the beauty. L.A. is the
most underestimated city in the entire world," he says, describing its
ability to draw exiles, émigrés and dreamers from everywhere.
He points to Billy Wilder, Charlie Chaplin and Walt Disney - as well
as his friend and countryman Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has collected
several of his paintings. "I'm interested in people who are not
satisfied with the world as it is and have impossible dreams."
The L.A. art scene, less organized and hierarchical than New York's,
suits him as well. He likens it to the "peaceful anarchy" of the city's
many ethnic groups and religions.One aspect of local culture that
Helnwein has not experienced from the inside is Hollywood. He's
designed for theater and ballet - and developed a series of graphic
photographs with rocker Marilyn Manson - and is increasingly
interested in working for the movies, perhaps with his friend Sean
Penn. But he admits that he doesn't bend easily when working in a group
and says collaboration entails "an ethics question to be true to your
vision."
Los Angeles Opera's artistic director, Edgar Baitzel, praises his work
but acknowledges that there was more creative tension than usual during
the "Rosenkavalier" production process. "Sometimes we really had to
stop him and say, 'No, that's it. No, we cannot.' We all love him here,
but it was not an easy job. He's just not used to compromise or working
with a creative team. This is artistic energy - you can't predict
it."
Schell calls Helnwein "a genius" with a great feel for "the closeness
of love and death" but notes their partnership was "two perfectionists
coming together. On certain things we could not agree: He is so
obsessed with what he's thinking out."
Helnwein has just left for Europe, where he opened a show in
Oberhausen, Germany, before returning to Ireland. He finds the green
hills, peat-scented air and antique culture of Tipperary to be a
necessary respite from L.A.'s "urban decadence" and lack of historical
memory. But both are important to him.
"I also want to really experience our times. And I think we are in a
decadent time where things are really falling apart. It's like the
great Western culture is finally coming to an end. It has many
parallels to the last days or Rome, when everything fell apart. And I
want to experience that with open eyes, you know?"
-Scott Timberg
Times Staff Writer
TWO MORE EXCEREPTS FROM LA/NY TIMES ARTICLES:
Los Angeles Times
Mark Swed
STRANGE BUT TRUE
Gottfried Helnwein's wondrous staging of "Der Rosenkavalier" is
eccentric and anachronistic - yet utterly faithful to its spirit.
A Rosenkavalier of surpassing strangeness
First things first: There is no overt lesbian sex in the new Los
Angeles Opera production of "Der Rosenkavalier." Hardly a hint of it.
Those who have been objecting to the company's advertisement featuring
two attractive women, moist lips apart and microseconds away from
plunging deeply into a sensual kiss, have little to fear. Maximilian
Schell's production, which opened Sunday night at the Dorothy Chandler
Pavilion, is not chaste, exactly, but it won't shock the typical
"Rosenkavalier"-goer. At least it won't shock anyone who doesn't mind
Bugs Bunny popping into the Marschallin's boudoir along with all the
other weirdos.
The second thing you should know about this "Rosenkavalier" is that it
is terrific. Richard Strauss' opera sounds great and looks sensational.
It is excellently sung, sumptuously conducted by Kent Nagano and,
thanks to Gottfried Helnwein, wondrously strange.
Helnwein - the Austrian artist (painter, photographer, performance
artist, filmmaker, hobnobber with the stars) who has a studio in
downtown L.A. - is known for everything from Marilyn Manson videos to
Holocaust installations. He is responsible for the sets, costumes and
that ad (which, by the way, looks like an image from a recent staging
of a Schumann oratorio that Helnwein designed in Düsseldorf).
Helnwein's vision of "Rosenkavalier" is monochromatic and a riot of
color. It is oddly traditional yet seriously odd. It is updated but
couldn't be more 18th century. And none of those opposites
contradicts...
To read the rest:
http://www.helnwein.com/news/update/artikel_2160.html
The New York Times
Anthony Tommasini
A 'ROSENKAVALIER' WITHOUT HAM AND SCHMALTZ?
the high-concept and boldly stylized sets and costumes by the designer
and visual artist Gottfried Helnwein will provoke the strongest
reactions.
- The Los Angeles Opera's much-anticipated new production of Strauss's
"Rosenkavalier" opened on Sunday night at the Dorothy Chandler
Pavilion, and you can bet that the high-concept and boldly stylized
sets and costumes by the designer and visual artist Gottfried Helnwein
are going to provoke the strongest reactions.
Restraint was not a hallmark of the outlandishly captivating
production. In a detailed program note, Helnwein writes that the era of
Maria Theresa was a time when everything was theater, at least for the
upper class, and that over-the-top fashion styles often included masks
and white-face. His designs combine spartan sets with wildly
extravagant costumes ranging in style from the surreal to the
ridiculous. Act I is bathed in shades of blue. In their stiffly modern
blue suits and blue-faced makeup, the Marschallin's notaries look like
the members of Blue Man Group. In Act II, the mansion of Herr von
Faninal, a wealthy commoner with aristocratic pretensions, glows with
garish golden yellows. Faninal's servants could be creatures from "The
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," no doubt an intentional evocation: the
production begins with projected scenes from Robert Wiene's 1926 silent
film adaptation of "Der Rosenkavalier," and Wiene also directed
"Caligari."
In any event, the cast seemed empowered by the production...
To read the rest:
http://www.helnwein.com/news/update/artikel_2161.html
Richard Loeb
<He...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1123555018.5...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
MV
"Eurotrash"?
<He...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1123555018.5...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
EvelynVogtGamble(Divamanque)
Richard Loeb wrote:
> How many times is this same article going to be posted??? Richard
Until the cretin who posted it actually goes to see some
other opera. (L. A. Opera's season closed the middle of
June!) ....But did you really HAVE to post the entire
article in your reply?