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| Golden Wagner and the Taboo on Nazism Orests Silabriedis Stefan HERHEIM (1970) was born in Oslo, made his debut in the world of theatre with his marionette productions, studied under Friedrich Götz at the Hamburg Music Academy and graduated with a production of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. He now lives in Berlin, working as stage director in Germany, Austria (at the Volksoper Wien), Estonia, Sweden, and Norway, and now in Latvia, too. He lectures at the Academy of Opera in Oslo. In Riga he's working on Richard Wagner's Das Rheingold, which will also be shown in May this year at the Bergen Festival. Stefan Herheim grew up in a musical family (his father was a musician with the opera orchestra in Oslo), and he himself played the cello, but already at an early age he developed an interest in drama, in the musical aspect of drama, and in opera. "The cello was an opportunity for me to enter the world of musical structures. I didn't change from music to directing. Rather, the allure of musical theatre gave me the impulse to play the cello". | |
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Orests Silabriedis: Do you consider yourself a radically oriented director? Stefan Herheim: I'm often asked whether I was aiming to provoke the audience with a particular production of mine. I think provocative works are those that tell of people's social and political utopias. One group of people regard opera as a beautiful flight from reality, and this gives rise to misunderstandings. Art reflects reality. Life is problematic, and so art is, too. O.S.: Do you consider the idea of opera as old fashioned? S.H.: Of course, opera can be the most boring thing on earth: the question is how we read it and interpret it. If there's a smell of dust when the curtain rises, then it's clear that nothing's going to happen. Opera is not a work of art that stays the same for 150 years. Opera must be reproduced. Unlike a painting, for example, opera cannot exhibit itself. And it's clear that we must read it in a contemporary way. If we do it as people of today, then opera cannot be old fashioned. Verdi and Mozart were the most modern composers of their time, but we flee to their works seeking refuge from the present day. O.S.: Can a director ruin a composer's achievement? S.H.: Interpretation cannot destroy the composer's idea. You can do something right or you can do it wrong, and then everyone can decide for themselves what's right and what's wrong. But this problem is thousands of years old: attempts to determine the only right solution and the only right way always lead to catastrophe. I think that interpretation is an attempt to communicate. O.S.: In the course of your directing work, do you try to put yourself in the position of the imaginary viewer? S.H.: Yes, I do imagine myself sitting in the audience. I think people might want to see this or that, and whether it will work. But I'll never be able to represent all of opera-going society. There will also be people who consider that, for the money they've paid, they have the right to get what they expected. However, there'll also be people awaiting new ideas, hoping to discover something new. O.S.: Do you feel good in the contemporary world? S.H.: People nowadays are forced to feel good, whether they want to or not. In my view, it's a matter of will: what you choose, how strong you are, to what extent you accept yourself. I'm full of complexes and oversensitive, but pain and hopelessness are among the most important sources of creativity. Opera directors are generally regarded as crabby oddballs. O.S.: How do you prepare for a new opera production? S.H.: For me, every opera is a unique universe to be discovered, and every opera has its own rules, which need to be deciphered. Every work has its own dynamism. You analyse the structure and the score, you listen a lot, feel the pulse and then the dreams and pictures appear. You talk to yourself in order to be able to communicate with others. And then there's the work of developing the concept in a team of at least three people, which becomes my family for an extended period of time. Sometimes you return to the same piece some years later, and every time you come to the realisation that you yourself are a different person and that the work, too, is different. There are always a host of questions and problems, but at the same time it makes you feel that you're hunting for truth and beauty. O.S.: Are you always convinced about what you're doing? S.H.: I'm never convinced about anything at all. My colleagues will probably assert the opposite, since, of course, I try to present a new idea in such a way that others will understand it and pick it up. But for me, doubt is the basic precondition for moving ahead and never being satisfied with what's been achieved. I think in a markedly structured way, and at the beginning of the work, I know what I want to achieve. But, when the work starts, there also begins in me a reworking process, under the influence of other people. However, the basic idea doesn't change, since the concept has emerged considerably earlier. You see, the stage is not simply a space that shows some particular setting - it illustrates the inner world of the protagonists. I can't think about action, if I don't have an idea of the space, and vice versa - I can't think about space, if I don't have an idea of what should happen in this space. It's a reflexive process. It's significant that in our team it's not clearly defined who creates the costumes, who's the scenographer, who analyses the drama and who's the director - we do everything jointly, and we do each other's jobs. O.S.: Can a singer influence your production? S.H.: The production may change if there's something a singer cannot do, if they don't live up to your expectations. Or sometimes it can happen that a singer suddenly turns your attention to some aspect you hadn't yet considered. The concept isn't what it's going to look like: the concept is what the message is about. And then we search together for theatrical approaches to make the story happen. O.S.: Do you like Wagner's music? S.H.: Of course I like Wagner's music, otherwise I'd never agree to direct Das Rheingold. True, once, in the course of my work, I came to understand that I didn't like a composer's concept, that I couldn't approach it. That was a piece of contemporary British music. For me, music is also a physical entity. In order to understand an opera, to find a common language with it, in order to get inside it, you have to have long-term physical contact with music. Wagner's music, his philosophical edifice, is organic to me. Not only in technical terms, with the interweaving of motifs, but also in the way he puts them to use. O.S.: You'll only be directing the first part of the tetralogy Der Ring des Niebelungen. S.H.: I was asked whether I'd be prepared to do the whole Ring cycle, but I only put myself down for the first part. In the end, you'll have four different concepts, four different Ring's, and because of the symbolic density, each part will seemingly contain the whole Ring. It could work quite well within this monumental frame. However, I'm very pleased that I don't have to do all four parts: I wouldn't be able to dwell in the same ideas for so long, one and the same philosophy. I change too quickly. But in Das Rheingold I like the fact that in two hours and twenty minutes you can tell practically the whole of the tetralogy, since the first part is the beginning of the end on a grand scale. It's not as if it contains everything, but Das Rheingold shows all the mechanisms that permit one to understand how the story's going to end. It seems this is the most political of Wagner's operas, and at the same time an excellent combination of comedy and tragedy. The cynicism, the irony that Wagner employs... But the political aspect lies in the way that Wagner talks about the end of our civilisation. We know that Wagner was a hypersensitive person, and it seems he could foresee what catastrophes would happen in the 20th century. This is a grand work of warning, so it's all the more ironic that this work became an icon, a creative spirit for Hitler in particular. At the present day in the Nordic countries of Europe one can observe from time to time a somewhat negative attitude to Wagner. Wagner is taboo, and Nazism is taboo. In my view, it's important in the Nordic countries in particular to try to determine how we cope with our cultural past, our taboos. O.S.: It's said that you'll be showing Bayreuth in the time of the Nazis? S.H.: Well, were going to start with the age of Wagner, and he himself will be on stage. Wagner built Bayreuth, created a new religion, created his Valhalla. This is his wall against the world, a wall that protects Wagner's strength. "I can't work with opera in the customary way it's done in Europe, I want to build my own temple", Wagner said. Bayreuth did not fulfil his aspirations, it became his problem, and after Wagner's death it also ceased to be an experimental workshop. Wagner's motto was "tomorrow I'll do everything differently". But after his death he became a hero, and the setting he'd created was open to all comers. And Nazism came along. That's an interesting problem, how Wagner was misunderstood and exploited. It's important to me to show that he's no holy cow. We have to try to sense him, to meet him, rather than glorify him untruthfully. O.S.: What, for you, is the Holy Grail? S.H.: I'll answer this in Bayreuth in 2008, with a production of Parsifal. The Grail, of course, is a symbol of that which is outside of us, something we have to find once again, which has always been inside us, something very human that we've forgotten and lost. One aspect of the Grail is compassion, which was always a special aspect for Wagner himself, too. We should define the Grail collectively, but that's utopian: imagine the Grail as a symbol uniting people. Of course, it could be Communion, which symbolises salvation, a new life given to us. We should act together, rather than against one another. It's not an individual work, it must be collective. Probably, every society strives to do this somehow, but it's hard. The quest for the Grail - this is the Grail itself, and each must take part of the burden upon themselves, in order for it to progress. O.S.: What, in your view, is genius? S.H.: There's no such definition. A genius must be capable of incorporating the whole world within themselves, seeking general relationships and looking above themselves. A genius has the guts and daring to try to make up for that which society does not provide, this society that is all too familiar and does not fulfil his hopes. A genius must accept loneliness in order to create what he's capable of creating. This is a great gift, if it can be realised. O.S.: Isn't each of your works in some way a self-portrait? S.H.: Here we come back to the same thing: if people tell me I'm being provocative, then I answer that this work provokes me. My work shows not only that which I do, think and feel, but also that which I lack. You don't do this publicly in order to be loved. You do it because this is your great opportunity to find fulfilment together with other people. It's a social process. It's like a cry for fellowship with those around you. When thousands of people watch one and the same thing, exist in one and the same virtuality, when they all follow one concept - all this contains something religious, contemplative and important. Our society has wasted a host of opportunities, and theatre is one of those few that can force one to develop a viewpoint, to participate. But this isn't going to happen if we have tedium on the stage, with happenings that everyone's quite familiar with, that don't stir up any feelings. O.S.: Do you have an ideal in art? S.H.: I'm a grand idealist. But art and reality have to go hand in hand, that's dialectic. It's important for me to be connected with life, to seize life and place it into a particular form. Then you define reality, compensate for reality. Language is not reality, it's a limited construct with rules. Music is something much more, and that's why it's so important in my life. O.S.: Perhaps you should direct symphonies - they don't have words? S.H.: I often wish I were a dancer and could express myself through absolute music. I'd enjoy directing the ballets of Tchaikovsky. However, four centuries of the existence of opera represents a sufficiently long period for a fairly young person to find work to do. In my opinion, I know what I'm capable of and what I want. At the close of our conversation, I posed a somewhat silly question to Stefan Herheim as to which is his favourite composer. Asserting that he can't stand questions of this kind, Stefan did come to the conclusion that Mozart's achievement is the most generous that a creative spirit has ever succeeded in giving to humanity. Among 19th century composers, it might be Wagner. And in the 20th century - Alban Berg. This year at the Salzburg Festival, Stefan will be directing Mozart's Entführung aus dem Serail. | |
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