GERMANY HAS SECONDS THOUGHTS ON NAZI THEMED TANNAHUSER
Nazi theme dropped after traumatised opera audience requires ‘medical treatment’
The violent and intense nature of the production left audience members reeling Hans Joerg Michel/AFP/Getty Images
A German opera company today scrapped its Nazi staging of a Wagner opera after the artistic transposition from the bucolic Middle Ages to the gas chambers of the Third Reich proved a goose step too far.
“Numerous” audience members at the Deutsche Oper Am Rhein’s opening night production of Tannhäuser “suffered psychological and physical stress so intense that they required medical treatment,” the opera company, based in Duesseldorf, said.
The most upsetting scene involved the central character – intended by Wagner to be a medieval travelling minstrel – dressed in SS uniform and carrying out a realistic execution of an entire family by shooting them individually in the neck.
Burkhard Kosminski, the director, who was booed at the premier on Saturday night, refused to compromise his artistic vision by removing individual scenes despite a growing chorus of outrage, the opera said in a statement yesterday.
After four days of internal wrangling, the company decided to ditch his vision altogether and carry on with the four-and-a-half hour opera tonight as a simple concert without staging and costume.
“The management of Deutsche Oper am Rhein was aware in advance of the Tannhäuser production of Burkhard C. Kosminski that its concept and implementation would arouse controversy,” the opera said in a statement on its website this morning.
“Our paramount concern was to respond to some scenes, especially the realistic shooting scene, which caused numerous visitors to suffer psychological and physical stress so intense that they required medical treatment.”
One woman contacted the Rheinische Post newspaper to complain that she had to take her husband to the doctor afterwards “because his blood pressure was significantly raised.”
Another member of the audience from Romania was seen leaving by the newspaper’s critic “bathed in sweat” complaining that the violence brought back terrible memories.
The statement continued: “After considering all the arguments we came to the conclusion that we cannot justify such an extreme impact of our artistic work….In intensive conversation with the director Burkhard C. Kosminski we discussed the possibility of changes to individual scenes. He refused for artistic reasons. As a matter of course, and also for legal reasons, we have to respect the artistic freedom of the director.
“We have therefore decided to perform Tannhäuser in concert from May 9.”
All tickets remained valid but could be exchanged, the opera added, without saying how many pre-booked seats had already been returned following the outcry.
The long shooting scene, in which the family of two parents and two children first have their heads shaved, was intended to dramatise Tannhauser’s state of mind, as was the appearance on stage of writhing naked bodies bathed in a gas-like effect. Another scene shows a character carrying out a brutal rape.
Richard Wagner, who was admired by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, remains controversial in Germany because of his well-known anti-Semitic views. Playing his music is still considered a taboo in Israel. But even Duesseldorf’s Jewish leaders were defending him over the changes to an opera first staged in 1845.
Yakov Hadas-Handelsman, the Israeli ambassador to Germany, joined in the complaints, saying: “Any use of Nazi symbols in such a setting is out of place.”
———————
Wagner production with gas chambers and swastikas denounced by German audience
Elena Zhidkova as Venus during the dress rehearsal HANS JOERG MICHEL/AP
A German opera company is considering toning down its modern interpretation of a Wagner opera after audience protested over scenes of characters dying in gas chambers and a family being stripped, shaved and executed by shots to the neck.
The Nazi theme, complete with swastika armbands and Hitler salutes, was intended to give a 20th-century twist to Tannhäuser, an opera originally set in the Middle Ages whose main themes are love and redemption.
Richard Wagner was much admired by Adolf Hitler and well-known for his anti-Semitic views but German critics lambasted the Deutsche Oper Am Rhein’s four-and-a-half hour production as “obscene” and “horrible”.
“Members of the audience booed and banged the doors when they left the opera house in protest before the end of the show,” said Michael Szentei-Heise, head of the Jewish community in Düsseldorf, home of the Deutsche Oper Am Rhein.
“It is ludicrous that I have to defend Wagner,” he said.
“This opera has nothing to do with the Holocaust — however, I think the audience has made this very clear to the opera and the producer.”
At the opening of the Düsseldorf performance, naked actors could be seen inside glass chambers, falling to the floor as white fog flowed in a clear allusion to the mass killings of Jews in Nazi death camps.
Tannhäuser, the bard and central character, appeared not in medieval costume but with an armband displaying the Nazi swastika symbol.
After a half hour, the music stopped and a family stepped on stage. The parents and their children had their hair shaved off and then they were shot dead in another reference to treatment of Jewish captives during the Holocaust.
Burkhard Kosminski, the artistic director, was booed when he took to the stage after the premiere on Saturday night.
The Rheinische Post reported that a Romanian opera fan in the audience had to leave “bathed in sweat” because it stirred up bad memories of living under the Ceausescu regime. It added that another reader had called to say that she had to take her husband to the doctor afterwards “because his blood pressure was significantly raised”.
Christoph Meyer, the opera director, said in a statement that the opera company never wanted to hurt the feelings of anyone in the audience.
“This is not about mocking the victims, but mourning them,” Mr Meyer said.
“We knew that with this staging and artistic concept that we could trigger some objections. The production uses the terrible crimes of the Nazis not as decoration or simply to scandalise, but shows the contentious scenes as evidence of an unbearable guilt … Nothing is further from our intentions than to hurt the feeling of people who have been personally affected by Nazism.”
The Berliner Zeitung newspaper felt it necessary to defend the composer in its review. “This reading does him a grave injustice — and that is not so easy to do Wagner a grave injustice.”
The controversy threatens to overshadow celebrations in Germany for the 200th anniversary of Wagner’s birth with a special birthday conference this month at the Bayreuth festival that he founded.
Comments are closed.
