FULL Der Traum vom Gesamtkunstwerk: Gegenwartskunst und Oper Documentary Germany 2023

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: Der Traum vom Gesamtkunstwerk: Gegenwartskunst und Oper  
• Composer: various  
• Libretto: various  
• Venue & Opera Company: various  
• Recorded: 2023
• Type: Other
• Singers:
• Conductor:   
• Orchestra:
• Stage Director:   
• Costume Designer:   

Information about the Recording

• Published by: ARTE  
• TV Director: Axel Fuhrmann  
• Date Published: 2023  
• Format: Broadcast
• Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
• Subtitles: nosubs  
• Video Recording from: YouTube     FULL VIDEO
•  

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

Encounters between fine arts and opera in the 20th and 21st centuries: Based on Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk, the two-part documentation makes it clear how fine arts and opera have nourished and influenced each other. The first episode focuses on two contemporary artists and their current stage work: Neo Rauch (*April 18, 1960), who created his first opera stage design with “Lohengrin”, and Markus Lüpertz (*April 25, 1941), who has already worked several times for the stage worked. Flashbacks show how artists at the beginning of the 20th century took up Wagner’s vision of a total work of art and discovered opera as a space for creative development.

a film by Axel Fuhrmann (born April 7, 1962)

Part 1 0:00
Part 2 26:00

Nowhere are contemporary art and opera more closely linked than in Bayreuth. Here the German painter Neo Rauch and his wife Rosa Loy designed the stage and costumes for Richard Wagner’s opera Lohengrin. Richard Wagner once wanted to realize his dream of a total work of art made up of painting, music and drama in the Festspielhaus on the Green Hill.
Two contemporary artists and their current stage work are the focus of the first episode of this two-part series. Neo Rauch, who created his first opera stage design with “Lohengrin”, and Markus Lüpertz, who has already worked for the stage several times. For the Theater Regensburg he designed costumes and sets for the opera “Una cosa rara” by the Spanish composer Vicente Martín y Soler.
Neo Rauch and Markus Lüpertz – two megastars of the art scene who couldn’t be more different. Both leave their studios and their absolute artistic freedom to let their art become three-dimensional.
Flashbacks into art history show how artists at the beginning of the 20th century took up Richard Wagner’s vision of a total work of art and discovered opera as a creative space for development. Adolphe Appia designed symbolist scenery, Pablo Picasso brought cubism into the opera, the Russian avant-garde caused a sensation worldwide and Bauhaus artists designed stage sets. When the National Socialists came to power, large parts of modernity were considered degenerate. Now the regime determines what is shown on the opera stages.

After the seizure of power in 1933, the National Socialists determined which artists were allowed to decorate operas. Reich stage designer Benno von Arent is now supposed to ensure that the stage sets are appropriate for the Nazi era. He oversaw the theaters of the Reich on behalf of the Ministry of Propaganda. With one exception: Bayreuth. Here Adolf Hitler is the personal artistic advisor to festival director Winifred Wagner. In Bayreuth, “Parsifal” is still performed, which Wagner himself once christened. In 1934 Hitler personally ensured that Alfred Roller, an artist of Viennese modernism, was commissioned to design the new “Parsifal” stage set. When the war was over, art was free to develop again and new opera houses were built in the 1950s. Artists and architects work together to make Wagner’s dream of a total work of art a reality. In Gelsenkirchen, Werner Ruhnau is building the Musiktheater im Revier, in which three internationally renowned artists are working: Robert Adams, Jean Tinguely and Yves Klein. The wall reliefs in the foyer are still Klein’s greatest works. The documentary tells of the reorientation of art on the opera stage after the Second World War. It spans the spectrum from the minimal art of the 1960s to the avant-garde spatial visions of the Italian star architect Renzo Piano and the light sculptures of James Turrell to the polarizing Wagner productions of Christoph Schlingensief at the beginning of the 21st century.