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Número 276 - Zaragoza - Diciembre 2023|
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| The Guardian: Thielemann sobre Bayreuth, el Anillo... |
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’The only star here is dead’ Conductor Christian Thielemann tells Stephen Moss why the Bayreuth festival is unique Thursday July 20, 2006 Guardian It is a blisteringly hot Sunday afternoon in Bayreuth. The Festspielhaus, the theatre Richard Wagner built to house his operas, squats in the sun. In a week or so, when the festival begins, it will teem with Wagner obsessives, fighting for tickets, but today it’s just me and a middle-aged German couple out for a stroll, enjoying the calm before the storm. The centrepiece of this year’s festival is a new Ring cycle - a great event at any opera house, at Bayreuth something akin to the second coming. The production is in the hands of conductor Christian Thielemann, Bayreuth’s favoured son, and director Tankred Dorst, an 80-year-old playwright who, despite never having directed an opera before, was appointed two years ago when Lars von Trier pulled out. Who says Bayreuth is conventional? What other house would entrust such a mammoth undertaking to an 80-year-old operatic ingénu? Dorst recently gave a largely impenetrable interview about the Ring to the German magazine Opernglas. "The characters are not from today," he said. "One is not quite sure where they’re from because they don’t have a historical location. They don’t come from antiquity; they don’t come from the middle ages; and they’re not scientific beings. They’ve vagabonded around and just ended up together. They are like people who have got stuck in our heads. Are they apparitions?" Could this be a virtual Ring? I had hoped Thielemann, trapped in a small room in between rehearsals of acts one and two of Siegfried, might elucidate the "concept", but he seems wary of the term. "The operas are a mish-mash of competing styles," he says. "The director has to impose something, as a conductor has to impose something, but impose is a big word. The music and the staging must work easily together. Neither must dominate." Thielemann is an opponent of so-called regietheater - director’s theatre - the notion that the core of a production is the director’s rethinking of the piece (a Wall Street Ring, a War on Terror Ring, a Global Warming Ring). "It is very interesting that in the word regietheater there is no mention of music," he says pointedly. "Obviously it is not necessary. There is too much happening on stage and it is so interesting that you forget there was an aria, or you say, ’Oh my God, she is singing!’" Unlike many recent Rings - not least the Bayreuth production it replaces - this one will have no overt political content. "We want to keep politics out of it. It is so boring, so predictable. We know the Ring is about power, we know that; water is wet. We don’t need to point it out. We can trust the public and the intelligence of people a little bit more. It can be not too clear sometimes. It’s like poetry: there are some moments where you can smell it but when you try to describe it, it’s kaput. It’s too subtle." But isn’t this an abrogation of interpretative responsibility? What is the Ring actually about? Thielemann offers a delightfully perverse view. "The Ring is not just an object, it also stands for circularity," he says. "People don’t learn from experience or they don’t learn as much as they should. In the end we go back to the beginning. It will happen again, not exactly the same way because some people are not there any more, but the thing is there - the gold, the Ring, the desire for power - and it will happen again." Thielemann says the Ring exposes the myth of perfection. Wotan tries, in Siegfried, to create the perfect hero - and the result is catastrophe. "You cannot create an ideal person," he says. "The Ring tells us that there is no ideal person because it’s impossible. Perfection, if it existed, would be really boring. If everything was perfect, there would be no need for development. We want to go somewhere. We don’t want to sit in a golden cage, which is what the gods try to do. They go to their golden cage and are unhappy with it." Thielemann, who is 47, loves Bayreuth and says he would conduct here rather than any of the great - and far more lucrative - opera houses of the world. (He gave up running the Deutsche Oper in Berlin in 2004 after repeated clashes with the city authorities over funding.) "This is not like a real theatre," he says. "It’s a theatre on a different planet. It’s like Mars or Jupiter. We go there in a space shuttle and then we go back to earth. That’s good for the music. Some of the musicians [chosen from orchestras across Germany] have been coming here for 30 years. They must be crazy. To play in this heat, in an uncomfortable pit with uncomfortable chairs, these long operas - and in their holidays! But it shows how happy they must be, and you feel that at rehearsals. They don’t just want to play it through; they want to rehearse." Bayreuth, he claims, is uniquely ego-free. "Nobody is paid very well. It is not necessary to be a star. It is not like a big international opera house with big fees, behaviour which is in line with these fees and press conferences. The only star in Bayreuth is dead." And that dead star? "Wagner is devil and god," says Thielemann. "He seduces you. He kills you with his intensity. He gives you the most wonderful sentiments and joy, and that is why people come here and get crazy about the music and sit on these hard chairs and wait for nine years for tickets. But it is sometimes too much. The Ring has no borderline; it is monstrous. Wagner asked: how long can I make it, how cruel can I be to singers and to the conductor, who has to conduct 14 hours of music? What can I do to people, how cruel can I be, and will they love me even if I am bad to them? And as you see, they adore him still." |
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| Leyendo el final de la entrevista creo deducir que Thieleman es masoquista. Según sus palabras ¿"la letra con sangre entra"?. NO creo que Wagner pensara en cuanto sufrirían los interpretes de sus obras para alcanzar su admiración, a él en cambio parece gustarle esa idea. Que simplon. |
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Lo suyo, colchonero, no es la ironía. Déjelo. Der Niblungen Herr |
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¿Pikolín es del atleti? Bueno, en mi molesta opinión, en el párrafo anteúltimo Thieleman parece un auténtico socialista de la más alta civilización. Saludos |
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Por qué no da su opinion sobre la entrevista y deja tranquilo al prójimo. Valiente tontería lo de colchonero, no le entiendo. |
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Es usted poco ocurrente, señor somier. Leb’ wohl! Der Niblungen Herr |
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Lo he pensado mejor. No me dejes tranquilo. Sigueme, cuando yo hable respondeme, cuando diga una tontería hazmelo saber, cuando me quede dormido despiertame. Utiliza para llamarme todos los sinónimos y adjetivos que mi nombre te sugieran. Hacía mucho tiempo que ningun perro lamia mis pisadas. |
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Coño, Pikolin, no te enfades, seguro que el Señor de los Nibelungos hace el comentario por bien. Últimamente estamos todos un poco susceptibles, debemos superar esta fase y volver a la clásica de la colaboración mutua. Todos aprendíamos mucho. Desgraciadamente yo no estaré en Bayreuth este año, me tocará cuando ya no merezca la pena asistir, verbigracia cuando los oligofrénicos progres de la escena campen a sus anchas en el festival. ¿Qué hacer entonces, ir o no ir? ¿Asistir a la decadencia o intentar corregirla? Hercúleas tareas para un diletante en busca del arte que un dia el maestro engendró. Ya veremos, el futuro no es obra de los humanos, particularmente ya tengo bastante con el presente. La eterna pregunta de si el el ser humano evoluciona hacia mejor la dejo para Kant. Me gustaría poder preguntártmelo, querría decir que me sobra tiempo para lo fundamental, el continuar. Saludos y gozad, Mario Rafael. |
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Sr. Rafael: En mi opinión, el dilema es claro: ¡ir!. Aunque sea para participar del milagro de la acústica de la sala, de la maravillosa orquesta, de los magníficos coros, del placer de pasearte por el maravilloso jardín en los entreactos, ver y escuchar las fanfarrias, por no hablar de la tranquila y preciosa ciudad... Incluso, a pesar de tener que soportar alguna oligofrénica producción. Yo tuve que padecer el vomitivo Parsifal de Schlingenshief, y a pesar de ello no me arrepiento de haber ido. Pero uno siempre puede cerrar los ojos... Saludos. |
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| El problema es que empieza uno tapándose los ojos para no ver ciertas producciones, y luego dan ganas de taparse los oídos para no oír a determinacdos cantantes (¿por qué gritaba Senta hace un momento? la oía hasta por encima del rugir de excavadoras bajo mi ventana). ¿Qué nos queda? A pesar de todo, estoy de acuerdo con Assur. Espero no tener que hacer como Tete Montoliú en un recital: tocó el piano mientras escuchaba la retransmisión de un partido del Barça, la radio en el bolsillo de la chaqueta y un auricular en el oído izquierdo. ¡Nadie se dio cuenta! El tío tocó como siempre. Pues eso. |
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Si el Anillo que empieza dentro de unos momentos es como el Tanhauser que oimos el año pasado o los Maestros cantores de hace unos años estoy seguro que asistiremos a una de esas versiones de referencia de Bayreuth Thieleman me parece el director wagneriano mas profundo entre los actuales y sus versiones nunca dejan indiferencia. Animo y a ver si se cumplen nuestras expectativas y el año que viene a verlo en Bayreuth |