The Lighter Side...

You might have noticed that updates have been seldom of late. This is due, partly, to a shift of focus to my main blog, The New York Feuilleton.

Here's a bit of humor from two very dissimilar items that I came across today.

First off, here's a middle school paper on Justin Bieber that was discovered on a shared hard drive at a Berlin school and forwarded to me by one of the school's employees.

"Justin Bieber is a bad singer and was a hobo…and still should be. He relies on his magical hamburger, Chicken Joe. He thinks his “fans” scream because they love him but they actually scream in horror.

Justin Bieber is so crazy he made a song called “Baby” for his baby doll called Sissy Hotdog.

The one person who wrote this is just jealous… " 

Second off, a luridly poetic CASUAL ENCOUNTERS craigslisting. I'm 80% certain that it's a joke, but who cares! It's still damn hilarious. The title of the post is "Love is a dog from Hell"

"HELLO HELLO 

I am searching a girl. For walking around under moon beams, smelling the perfume of night flowers. Discover

the mystery who is hiding in the empire of darkness. Dance Dance until our feet become magma. I want someone

to deeply watch the chaos with me, the plasma TV of supernova explosion. OH OPHELIA WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ?

YOUR PRINCE IS HERE. And he is standing in his grey-desert suit, with faded roses in his left hand. OH, COME AND

SEE THE DARK GLORY IN MY EYE. Would you be my neuroleptic princess ? The velvet rolling up my heart ?

Come drink my mythological verb.

PS : Of course, you will have to be beautiful and rich."

 Hope that this has enlivened your day. Feel free to forward any similar tidbits.

The Night Kitchen Staff

Berlin Opera x 3

- from the July issue of OPERA NEWS magazine

Die Walküre

BERLIN

Staatsoper Unter den Linden

4/17/11

The big news from Berlin Staatsoper's presentation of Guy Cassiers's Die Walküre, which had its premiere in December at La Scala, was the role debut of Rene Pape as Wotan. In the weeks leading up to the Staatsoper transplant, which took place during the company's Festival Weeks, some critics voiced concern about whether Pape's voice was too dark or deep for the role. There was no need to worry. After his fiercely angular Act II confrontation with Fricka, Pape made his scenes of summary and repetition dramatically compelling through careful intonation and subtle shadings — a testament to his voice's dramatic flexibility. One could hardly wait him for him to take the stage again in Act III.

Pape's farewell to Brünnhilde was muscular yet yielding, reminiscent of his anguished "Ella giammai m'amò" as Filippo in Don Carlo (a role that he will reprise in Berlin next month). It was miles away from James Morris's paternal lull, or Theo Adams's wild fury. Pape's portrayal was filled more with weariness, bitterness sorrow and tenderness. Throughout the long goodbye, he sang crisply and carefully, with dark, creamy textures and nuanced phrasings.

But Pape was only the brightest jewel in this gem-studded Ring, which featured a few holdovers from the Scala performances. Simon O'Neill is no stranger to the role of Siegmund, but he sounded particularly warm and noble in the intimate confines of the Schiller Theater, the Staatsoper's temporary home during a four-year-long renovation. Aside from a few weak cries of "Nothung," he was sensational — riveting throughout this demanding role. Anja Kampe was impassioned yet in full control as his sister-bride, Sieglinde. Berlin cheered the German soprano's convincing, no-holds-barred account.

Iréne Theorin was the evening's Brünnhilde. She was loud, flamboyant and electric but also capable of subtlety and even mystery, as in her apparition to Siegmund in the forest. The Danish soprano has sung Brünnhilde everywhere from Copenhagen to Tokyo. Her performance was so satisfying all around that she could be forgiven a few shrill moments at the start of Act III, where her flying sisters were all in top form. 

Ekaterina Gubanova (who also appeared in fall's Rheingold) was unshakable in her righteous fury as Fricka, singing with precise and cutting tones. For this Russian soprano who is best known for bel canto — and who did not start to tackle Wagner until 2005, with Peter Sellars's Paris Tristan — this performance could mark a new direction in her career. 

Rounding out the principle cast, Mikhail Petrenko was an unusually lyrical Hunding (a role that the Russian bass has sung at the Met) and uncovered his character's sympathetic side.

Cassiers's Walküre was a qualified success in Berlin, unlike the fully magnificent Rheingold he presented at the house in September. The videos (by Enrico Bagnoli) that were projected onto a variety of surfaces, including a spinning sphere, trees and the entrance to Hunding's house, were hit-or-miss. The abstract effects were more compelling, while the more concrete images (Pape's gigantic bobbing head, fire effects that might have come from a Heavy Metal fan website circa 1997) were often ridiculous and distracting. In Act III, floating and swimming bodies were beamed onto a translucent screen, behind which two dancers performed a simple, acrobatic duet suspended from the rafters. 

Valhalla was heaped high with enormous statues of horses, which harmonized with the Flemish relief that is the main set detail of this Ring. Much of the acting was somewhat abrupt and artless — qualities that, oddly enough, seemed to be a directorial choice. Cassiers, who leads the Antwerp Toneelhuis, is usually more careful about guiding his cast.

Daniel Barenboim whipped up the orchestra to a positive frenzy. He snuck onto the podium before Act I and tore breathlessly into the frantically vibrating prelude. The rest of the evening was just as dramatically incisive and quick-blooded, with many moments of exhilaration. The Staatskapelle showed commitment, focus and stamina, even if there were a few weak spots in the horns. 

Salome

BERLIN

Komische Oper Berlin

4/10/11

To strip or not to strip? That is the question that faces any director who chooses to tackle Richard Strauss's Salome. In the case of the Komische Oper Berlin, a house that regularly showcases naked limbs in its most emblematic productions, the answer seemed a no-brainer. The surprise, then, was that Thilo Reinhardt's new production (seen Apr. 10), which opened in mid-April, did not feature any nudity whatsoever! Nor, for that matter, was there a solo dance of any kind. Instead, Salome led Herodes through a rotating funhouse of orgiastic and sacrilegious delights that played like the demon spawn of Ken Russell, Monty Python and David Lynch. It was easily the most ecstatically choreographed and daffiest ten minutes I've ever had at the opera. Moreover, it was fresh and compelling, like the rest of this exciting production. Reinhardt, a German director who has previously been represented at the KOB through his popular productions of Les Contes d'Hoffmann and The Queen of Spades, provided a staging that was intelligent, focused and, with the exception of the trippy Dance of the Seven Veils, rather simple and undistracting. The set, by Paul Zoller, resembled an enormous pop-up book, with King Herodes's palace leaning expressionistically in the background. There were other storybook touches, including retractable red carpeting to indicate blood, which are certain to draw comparisons between this Salome and Achim Freyer's abstract and colorful production of the opera over at Deutsche Oper Berlin. 

Despite the relatively uncomplicated staging, this is arguably the biggest challenge that the KOB has taken on in a highly ambitious season that opened in September with Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. For a house that began life as a home for singspiels and operettas, the arrival of Salome was something less than a given. Even today, when standard operatic fare has overtaken musicals in frequency, the house rarely attempts Wagner or Strauss. For a house of this size, Strauss's massive orchestra was shockingly loud and often drowned out the singers. 

Just two weeks earlier, Simon Rattle led an electric concert performance of Salome with the Berliner Philharmoniker, which emphasized the score's dazzling ornamentation and invention without sacrificing dramatic momentum. At the KOB, by contrast, much of the rich profusion of detail was swallowed up. Alexander Vedernikov, former music director of the Bolshoi Theater, presided over a swift, bold performance that, understandably for an orchestra so unaccustomed to performing Strauss, was only partially convincing. The orchestra played with impressive unity, even though the spectrum of effects was limited and the many textures could certainly have been clearer. Most critically, though, the musicians were fairly insensitive to the singers, who were often scrambling to keep up or struggling to make themselves heard. This was especially the case with some of the more conversational vocal writing, such as Herodes's lengthy negotiations with Salome.

The evening's Herod, Andreas Conrad, a former ensemble member, tore through his lines with a breathless rapidity that may have been dramatically persuasive but was musically disappointing. Mezzo Christiane Oertel was one of all-around strongest singers of the evening as Herodias, although her notes sometimes took on a strident edge. House tenor Thomas Eberstein did admirable double duty as Narraboth and the Fourth Jew, a comical situation necessitated by a last-minute withdrawal. Latvian bass Egils Silins was a sexualized and wryly mocking Jochanaan, in this production clad in Che Guevara-style beret and dungarees, his body covered in Kabalistic tattoos. His singing was impressively furious and menacing, yet controlled, even while he was being straddled by Salome. 

And then there was the evening's Salome, the ravishing Morenike Fadayomi (one of two Salomes singing in this production; the other is Annette Seiltgen) in a highly satisfying performance. Fadayomi is an ensemble member at the Staatstheater in Braunschweig, where she appears in other heavy roles such as Tosca, Leonora and Katerina in Lady Macbeth of Mzensk. With her impressively full range, she landed sensational high notes and purred blood-curdling low ones. Despite the erratically oversexed portrayal favored by director Reinhardt, she sculpted her phrases with sensitivity and pursuasiveness. It was a pity that the orchestra often overwhelmed even her. This Salome will be seen here eight more time before season's end in July, which should give everyone enough time to work out a better balance between stage and pit. 

Wozzeck

BERLIN

Staatsoper Unter den Linden

4/21/11

The Berlin Staatsoper's spring festival days kicked off with a striking new production of Wozzeck, Alban Berg's Expressionist masterpiece, first given by the same company in 1925 (seen Apr. 21). Expectations ran high for the Staatsoper debut of Andrea Breth, the house director of Vienna's Burgtheater, whose elegant, menacing vision was one of the most persuasive productions I've seen in a long while. The sparse set (by Martin Zehetgruber) was a pavilion seen in various configurations and segments arranged to resemble prison cells, the frames of a comic strip, a rotating carnival or a madhouse. The few props were well chosen and effective in their starkness: dead rabbits being skinned by Andres, a radioactively green pea soup that the doctor spilled over Wozzeck's head. There were moments of crude sexuality and wantonness, with more implied than actually shown. Olaf Freese's sickly lighting enhanced the grim goings-on. All in all, this sleek production was a perfect fit for a work that's lost none of its power or daring. Claustrophobic, Kafkaesque and brutal, it was so suited to the music that the stagecraft almost became invisible. It was as if Breth had discovered the perfect tuning fork to resonate with every note of Berg's opera — not to mention an impressive cast to bring its dramatis personae to vivid life.

In the title role was Roman Trekel, a house baritone whose singing over the past few seasons has been uneven. There was no need to worry here, however, as Trekel proved to be superbly prepared and committed. His interpretation of the role was fairly traditional, although rarely have I seen such a bitter and rage-filled performance that was equally impressive vocally. In the past, Trekel has been somewhat clipped in the emotional range of his heavier roles. Here, he let loose with stunning despair, fear and anguish, attacking this famously difficult role with precision and gravity, while unexpectedly finding sweetness in the aching of a man splitting in half. His character's distress was palpable throughout his performance, even as he managed to sing accurately with his crepuscular and quivering tones. 

His Marie matched Trekel in commitment if not, sadly, in execution. German mezzo-turned-soprano Nadja Michael is a highly impressive singing actress with a remarkably large vocal range. Here she used it to great effect, although her diction was distractingly imprecise and bizarre. Otherwise, her performance could have benefited from a general toning down. This is not to say that she sang shrilly: she just sounded somewhat unhinged vocally. She was at her best in her understated reading from the Bible at the beginning of Act III. 

Wozzeck's tormentors, the Captain and the Doctor, were effective both individually and as a team. Singing the former was Graham Clark (who has sung the role often at the Met) in a deliciously manipulative and jeering performance marked by grotesque high-pitched taunting. Pavlo Hunka's sinister, ghoulish Doctor seemed like a Grosz painting come to life. 

Tenor John Daszak, seen last season as Edmund in Komische Oper's new production of Lear, was a confidant, surly Drum Major, a role he performed in a muscle suit — a touch that was both clever and a trifle distracting. House tenor Florian Hoffmann, who recently starred in the company's new Rake's Progress made the most of his small role as Andres.

Fresh from conducting the company's new Walküre, Daniel Barenboim shifted gears impressively for the infernal variety of Berg's fifteen musical scenes. A holdover from the Wagner, however, was the propulsive forward charge and speed of the performance, which he slowed down during the musical interludes. Barenboim's approach is less obsessed with instrumental detail than Levine's is. It was in the music's more frenzied moments that one felt the acoustical limitations of the Schiller Theater, the Staatsoper's temporary home for the next four seasons. The orchestra never drowned out the singers, but a one could certainly imagine a balance that was kinder both to the singers and to the myriad orchestral effects and inventions. Aside from that, it was hard to argue with a dramatic momentum and drive that left one breathless. Even better news: Berth and Barenboim will join up again to tackle Lulu during the 2011–2012 season. 

A. J. GOLDMANN

Tristan und Rusalka

Here, just in from Opera News, are my reviews of the recent productions of Tristan und Isolde and Rusalka, from the Deutsche Oper and Komische Oper Berlin respectively.




After worthy new productions of Die Meistersinger at Komische Oper and Die Walküre at Staatsoper, the Berlin opera season's ambitious Wagner plans hit a snag with the March 13 premiere of Tristan und Isolde at Deutsche Oper Berlin. Director Graham Vick delivered a static, unfocused and ridiculous production, with the action confined to the living room of a modest suburban house. Paul Brown's nondescript, Ikea-inspired set was swiveled in various directions to distinguish between the three intended locations. The logic behind the characters' actions was difficult to penetrate. Tristan sat despondently on a sofa for most of Act I. Kurwenal entered wearing an apron. Melot awkwardly rearranged furniture in Act II. In Act III, he was killed coming out of the kitchen. Most perplexingly though, toward the end of the anguished final act, Tristan, now an old man, wandered offstage before Isolde reached him. The naked bodies that appeared periodically just added to the general confusion and detracted from the emotional power of the performances.

The title roles were taken by DOB regulars Peter Seiffert and Petra-Maria Schnitzer.  The pair had surprisingly little onstage chemistry, despite being a real-life couple. Schnitzer, who was taking on the role for the first time, cut a serviceable if somewhat light figure as Isolde. Her voice carried her well through the evening, and she sang with full, open tones that turned marvelously creamy in the love duet. Aside from a couple of shrill high notes of greeting to Tristan during his Act II entrance, Schnitzer seemed to be playing it safe: she demonstrated a finesse that came at the expense of emotional complexity and vocal shading. 

Despite some less than persuasive acting (especially during the Act I climax, in which the lovers took the potion intravenously), Seiffert, a practiced Tristan, was astonishing, vocally and dramatically convincing all the way through the evening. He rode the crest of the love duet admirably (thanks, as well, to Schnitzer and a hushed orchestra) and showed up for the murderous Act III in top form. Here, Seiffert landed his punishing high notes with brilliance, urgency and accuracy. 

Eike Wilm Schulte was an unusually bright-voiced Kurwenal who made the role his own with a gripping and precise account marked early on by some idiosyncratic staccato. Icelandic bass Kristinn Sigmundsson was miscast as King Marke, sounding less a wounded monarch than a sorry old man. Perhaps this was Sigmundsson's idea of understatement, but a Marke without nobility makes little sense. Sigmundsson certainly improved in Act III, but he never fully vanquished the tired, despondent tones that marred his performance. Jane Irwin, as Brangäne, was off-form for much of the evening, especially during her warning cries, "Habet Acht!" which rang out flatly. 

In the pit, Donald Runnicles led the superbly prepared orchestra in a propulsive and sensitive reading of the marathon score, occasionally overwhelming the singers. The prelude was full-blooded, with a plush, velvety sound to the strings, although the horn blasts could have been more prominent. Among the more pleasant effects were the soft texture of the ebbing strings and winds during the love duet and the understated mournfulness of the English horn solo in Act III.



Glimpses of the future were sighted at Komische Oper Berlin in late February, when incoming intendant Barrie Kosky took the house under the sea for his new production of Dvořák's Rusalka (seen Feb. 20). If Kosky's staging of Dvořák's melancholy fairy-tale opera was any indication, the house's future seems to be rather consistent with its present — not at all surprising, considering the popularity that Kosky has enjoyed during the tenure of the reigning Intendent Andreas Homoki. Rusalka is the sixth opera that Kosky, a versatile Australian director with a flair for batty regietheater concoctions, has directed at the house since 2003's Le Grand Macabre. His most recent outing here was last season's Rigoletto, a Houdini-inspired staging that was notably airless and menacing. It was a relief, then, to see that his take on Rusalka was both more restrained and more coherent.

The strangest part of Kosky's staging was also the one easiest to overlook — a mock-up of a miniature theater served as a slightly cramped space for the production to unfurl. The stage remained quite bare for most of the evening, save for a few tables and benches. Only in Act III was the whiteness of the set put to use, when a digital mock-up of the stage was projected onto the space, creating a slightly dizzying Disney Haunted House-type effect.

Kosky emphasized the story's inherent tragedy and the inevitable futility of Rusalka's mission. Though the plot was presented in a farce-like, even slapstick manner, the violence made one chuckle and wince at the same time. One such moment was Rusalka's transformation into a full-fledged woman. Here, the heroine was literally filleted by Ježibaba, who sliced open Rusalka's tail with a large knife and jerkily pulled out her vertebra. Indeed, fish were a generally prevalent theme of this production; Kosky littered the stage with aquatic specimens to both comedic and poignant effect. The Gamekeeper and Turnspit's scene in Act II contained many remote-controlled fish and eels flipping and flopping, soon to be hacked open and gutted. In the opera's finale, Rusalka hooked herself to a fishing rod left in the dead prince's arms, which provided an eerie and melancholy closing tableau.

Kosky's staging was consistent with the predominant style of KOB (physically dynamic regietheater), but there was more news to report in the singing department. In the title role was the Norwegian soprano Ina Kringelborn, a recently appointed ensemble member who did stellar work as Eva in September's premiere of Meistersinger. She lent the role of the water nymph a sweet urgency that encompassed rapture and despair. She often turned plaintive and sang with slightly dark shadings. Her range was impressive and blessedly free of breaks. Her delivery of the famous song to the moon was highly dramatic yet controlled — a stupendous legato-based performance noted for its controlled, steady phrasing, which Kringelborn ornamented with passing notes that galloped.

Timothy Richards, an old hand at the house, was disappointing as the Prince. His voice was too weighty for the role, and while he sang ardently, he often sounded leaden and even tired, despite a few brilliant high notes. He seemed to have trouble staying on top of the music, a shortcoming magnified by his stellar costars. Top male honors went to two other ensemble members, bass Dimitry Ivanschenko as Vodník (the Water Gnome) and tenor Peter Renz as the comical Gamekeeper.

As for the women, the striking Ursula Hesse von den Steinen made for a sultry Foreign Princess. She seduced the prince with her menacing and quivering voice. Agnes Zwierko was petrifying as the sorceress Ježibaba and struck bloodcurdling tones with dramatic conviction that bordered on the hammy, an impression heightened by this production. (In one scene, she killed a black cat and squeezed the blood out of its neck for Rusalka to drink.) 

Patrick Lange, KOB's young chief director, led his orchestra in a sensitive performance that conveyed the work's dramatic sweep and brought out the score's delicate harmonies through careful dynamic variation. Dvořák's shimmering and most through-composed opera was sullied only by occasional sloppiness in the horns.

No Journalism After Auschwitz

Originally published in the New York Jewish Week

Mixed Media: Never Forget What Was Never Reported

Ari L. Goldman

Auschwitz, Poland — The philosopher Theodor Adorno famously said, “After Auschwitz, there can be no poetry.” While visiting the site of the notorious death camp last week, I could see the truth of Adorno’s words. There is no beauty in the barracks, the barbed wire and the crematoria. I saw no poetry in the mounds of hair and glasses and shoes on display.

But I did reach one other conclusion on my visit: “After Auschwitz, there must be journalism.” After all, the greatest stain on the practice of journalism in the 20th century was its failure to adequately tell the story of the Nazi crimes against the Jews. The mere telling of that story might have stopped — or at least slowed — the Nazi murder machine.

I was in Eastern Europe leading a group of journalism students on an exploration of the press during the Shoah. The goal of the program was to apply the ethical lessons of that time to contemporary situations, be they genocide, totalitarian regimes or corruption.

The program, administered by the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, is called Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics, known in short as FASPE. Journalists, of course, were not the only professionals who failed. There are also FASPE programs for law and medical students and for seminarians of all faiths.

The Rwanda government, military and the press incited and supported the murders, but the killings were often carried out in a random fashion by marauding mobs wielding machetes. What struck my Rwandan student, Eugene Kwibuka, while at Auschwitz, was the systematic apparatus of death that the Nazis established: the roundups, the deportations, the selections, the gassing, the burning and the harvesting of usable items, like gold teeth and hair.Only three of the 12 students in the journalism program were Jewish. Among the others were two students from India and two from Africa, all of whom had covered strife between ethnic and religious groups. One of the Africans was from Rwanda, which experienced a genocide of its own in the 1990s, when warring tribes killed 800,000 people.

He noted that victims were treated not like human beings, but like a “product.” “They were washed, killed and destroyed without a trace,” Kwibuka said. “A brutal process.”

Before coming to Auschwitz, our group visited Berlin where among the stops was the House of the Wannsee Conference, where, on Jan. 20, 1942, 15 top Nazis met to finalize plans for the murder of all of Europe’s 11 million Jews. Wannsee House is now an education and documentation center, and we met with one of its splendid educators, Wolf Kaiser.

Kaiser told us that when Hitler came to power in 1933, one of his most strategic appointments was of Joseph Goebbels as minister for propaganda. Goebbels snuffed out any independent press that existed and put what remained in the service of the regime. In 1932, there were 4,700 newspapers in Germany; by 1944, as the regime was collapsing, fewer than 1,000 existed. None of them were telling the truth, either about the Jews or about the Nazi defeats on the military fields.

The failures of the American press to tell the story of the Shoah have been richly documented by two scholars: Deborah Lipstadt of Emory University and Laurel Leff of Northeastern University. The one exception to the failure of the American press was the work of the Jewish press, which told the story of the Holocaust even though no one in power seemed to listen. Evidence of this is abundantly clear with the recent opening of the archives of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which are available online atwww.archive.jta.org.

Inevitably the discussion among my journalism students turned to the use of social media today, such as Facebook and Twitter, and how repressive regimes in Egypt and Tunisia were brought to their knees by what amounted to “citizen journalists” and their smartphones. The flip side of these social media tools, my students were quick to point out, are that they have the potential to distract us from what is important by burying us in gossip. We don’t always focus on genocides taking place in Africa or Asia today because we are too busy updating our Facebook pages.

David Goldman, a lawyer who is a friend but not a relative of mine, is the founder and driving force behind FASPE. He does not necessarily expect to stop despots or totalitarian regimes through the program, but he does hope to instill in participants an ethical sense that will shape their professional careers. “If we see terrible wrongs, it is our job as professionals to do something about that,” he said.

FASPE will be again be taking students from medical, law, theology and journalism schools next summer. To get more information go to www.mjhnyc.org/faspe. To see the work of the journalism students, go to ww.faspe.info/journalism2011.

What the Demjanjuk Verdict Means for Germany

On May 12, a Munich court handed down a verdict of guilty to John Demjanjuk for accessory to the murder of 28,060 Jews at Sobibor extermination camp, thereby ending three decades of legal proceedings to bring the former camp guard to justice.

The Demjanjuk case brings to mind “Deaths-Head Revisited,” the classic Twilight Zone episode where a former Nazi is put on trial by the ghosts of the inmates he tortured and killed at Dachau. Like the SS captain in the episode, Demjanjuk successfully managed to conceal his wartime past for decades. For Demjanjuk, who just turned 91 and may not end up serving any more prison time, the real punishment has consisted in being endlessly confronted and tortured by his past for nearly a third of his life.

Let us be very clear. The Munich trial, which began in November 2009 was never about Jews. It was always about Germany. 

In late October 2010, I went to Munich to report on the trial for the Jewish weekly newspaper The Forward. I was sent because the trial seemed to be winding down and the trial dates became scarcer and scarcer as Demjanjuk’s ailments (or alleged ailments) multiplied. At the time, I wrote: “One feels a palpable sense disconnect between the laudable goal of bringing a Nazi criminal to justice, and the humdrum grind of a long trial that sputters and slouches to an uncertain endpoint.”

Certainly, the defendant’s age and frailty were much commented-on. Pictures of Demjanjuk ailing and in bed gained him some sympathy from the press. But as Norman Moscowitz, a former lawyer for the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations reminded me at the trial, “There’s no statue of limitations for murder.”

One can also refer to Philip Roth’s characterization of Demjanjuk in his novel, Operation Shylock: “[Demjanuk] proves only that to be both a loving grandfather and a mass murderer is not all that difficult.”

The Holocaust is the largest crime of the 20^th Century. And while modern-day Germany confronts its grim past on a daily basis like no other country (try to name other countries that have monuments to national crimes), the prosecution of Nazi criminals here over the past sixty years has been deeply flawed. The judges and lawyers in the Munich trial came of age in a Germany that grappled with its darkest chapter through research, debate and historical inquiry. These are the same qualities that have spurred Germany to its many research and commemoration projects.

In Berlin, where I live, everywhere you tread the streets are scattered with gold stones, the “Stolpersteine” (stumbling blocks) that remember the Jews who lived here before the war.  The Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe, occupies the very center of this once-divided city. Next week, the documentation center on the grounds of former Gestapo headquarters will host an international conference on the Eichmann Trial.

It is right that Jewish groups and leaders applaud the Munich court’s decision, but this trial is far more important for Germany, who took the unprecedented step in 2009 of extraditing Demjanjuk from the United States to stand trial for serving as a guard at Sobibor.

The Munich trial represented a remarkable shift. The prosecution was based on a theory that could have lead to thousands of convictions over the past six decades: in the lack of evidence of a specific crime, the prosecutors argued that if Demjanjuk was at a death camp, he participated in the killings.

           

At the trial, I spoke with relatives of Sobibor victims, who under German law, were allowed to join the prosecution as co-plaintiffs. They all told me the same thing. This trial isn’t about revenge. It is about justice. One of them, a Dutchman named Robert Fransman, even told me that he didn’t care a stitch about a sentence, just the conviction.  

In 1993, when the Israeli Supreme Court overturned its 1988 conviction of John Demjanjuk as the notorious Treblinka guard “Ivan the Terrible” after hitherto unseen evidence from Soviet files had come to light, the judges ruled, “The matter is closed — but not complete, the complete truth is not the prerogative of the human judge.”

In Munich, too, justice has been imperfect, incomplete, human. 66 years after the end of the Holocaust, John Demjanjuk is finally convicted and sentenced. We can certainly see this as too little too late. But we can also take comfort in the fact that Germany is taking steps to ensure that not all the murders will die peacefully in their beds. 

Wim Wenders on Using 3D Technology

(Published in the May /June travel issue of SOMA)

Among the world’s greatest filmmakers, Wim Wenders has persistently resisted easy categorization. One of the leading representatives of New German Cinema in the 1970s, he also has to his credit a $20 million sci-fi flop (Until the End of the World), an ill-fated collaboration with Francis Ford Coppola (Hammett) and a series of music documentaries, including his loving portrait of Cuban musicians, Buena Vista Social Club.

Now with nearly 30 feature and non-fiction films to his credit, Wenders has become one of the first European filmmakers to wield 3D digital technology with Pina, his loving portrait of the German choreographer Pina Bausch, who died in June 2009. The documentary débuted at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival and was released stateside by Sundance on April 22nd.

An exuberant, lavishly-produced celebration of Bausch’s work, the film features dancers from her Tanztheater Wuppertal performing scenes from the ensemble’s best-known pieces, including “Café Müller,” “The Rite of Spring” and “Vollmond.” The stereoscopic technology is cleverly married to a fantastical mise en scène that pirouettes off Bausch’s stage and onto the streets, forests and public transportation of Wuppertal and its environs.

Wenders and Bausch had been discussing the possibility of collaborating on a film for roughly 20 years. Both were frustrated, however, by the limitations of two-dimensional cinema, specifically the medium’s inability to create a proper sense of space and depth. “I felt like there was a wall between her art and the essence of it and what it did in every live performance to every viewer I ever met, how it touched us and how it concerned us, that everyone’s soul was open,” Wenders explains during the Berlin Festival over coffee at the Adlon Hotel. “I didn’t think film could do it and my craft couldn’t do it.”

Wenders’ eureka moment came at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, where a short 3D film by U2 was screened as part of one of the band’s concerts. “That little film was a sheer revelation for me and I hadn’t expected it. I did not expect technology to open that door,” the director continues. “I almost did not see the film, but I saw the potential of it.”

But technology had a long way to come to allow for the natural space that Wenders wanted to capture. “I wanted a sort of 3D that would disappear and make itself invisible and would just allow us entrance to space itself, which of course was the medium of Pina’s dancers. And so I had high hopes for this technology but it was a use of this technology that was so far unknown,” explains Wenders, expressing his admiration for James Cameron’s Avatar, while admitting that the live-action elements of the film pale in comparison to the animated ones.

“In order to face real life there was no example, there was not much done before and that was right away the biggest challenge because as much as the technology opened the door to space, it had no access to movement,” the director reflects.

Filming in 3D presented its opportunities and challenges. “We had to do our very best through these unknown two eyes [of the 3D camera] to make this emotion stay and reappear on the screen. In a way, the screen became nonexistent because in 3D the screen is gone and you see through it and it becomes a huge window and, of course, that was a new territory—this window into Pina’s work,” says the director, adding that he was guided by a sense of responsibility to Bausch: “I had to answer to myself that question with every shot: was it good enough? This is in its core a documentary and a documentary has a mission. It has the aim of showing something that you like and that you care about as beautiful as possible.”

Wenders says that making the film also helped Bausch’s ensemble process the reality of their founder’s death and move on to the next stage. “They are carrying this heritage and that they are Pina’s work now, because it doesn’t exist outside of this company,” the director says. “Her legacy is her 40 plays. And this company is doing all these plays and they have accepted that they are carrying this treasure and that nobody else can carry it. The film was a crucial step for them to take that responsibility,” he explains.
Wenders feels that there is a happy marriage between 3D and dance, and he is obviously satisfied with the film he stresses that he made for Bausch. To the larger question of whether 3D is merely a fad or something more lasting, Wenders thinks the technology is here to stay. He hopes, however, that directors will use this new tool prudently. “I think the stories will need a certain affinity to it and not every story needs to be told in 3D. I can only say that if I see most of the films today, it doesn’t make sense,” he says sharply.

Where he sees the greatest hope for the medium is not in animation or fantasy blockbusters, but in documentary films. “The core of it is that it gives you a different access also to reality, not just to fantasy, but to reality. I think the glorious application in the future will be a new realm of documentaries,” he elaborates, suggesting that filmmakers will use 3D to transport audiences to faraway places and experiences. Think of it as virtual travel.

This seems to be a view also held by Wenders’ countryman (and fellow New German Cinema veteran) Werner Herzog, who was also brandishing 3D technology at this year’s Berlin Festival with his Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a documentary about Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc, a cave in southern France which contains what are believed to be the oldest paintings and drawings in the world. Wenders has yet to see the film. He missed festival screenings because he was “busy partying” after the Pina premiere.

Mahlerfest Leipzig!

(originally published at gramophone.co.uk)

One of the greatest pleasures of Gustav Mahler’s ten symphonies is how malleable they are, how wide a range of interpretive possibilities they open to the orchestras and conductors who dare to tackle them.

We’ve come a long way indeed from critic Paul Rosenfeld’s memorable 1922 characterisation of Mahler’s symphonies as “monuments of anguished aborted life, like indeed to torture-masses devised by the imagination of a ferocious medieval god for the punishment of transgressors against him".

Just as the composer’s 150th Birthday last July set off a worldwide Mahler frenzy, the 100th anniversary of his death, on May 18, has sparked a new wave of concerts.

In Berlin, Claudio Abbado paid a visit to his old band, the Berliner Philharmoniker, for a performance of Das Lied von der Erde (with soloists Jonas Kaufman and Anne Sofie von Otter); the Konzerthausorchester invited Michael Gielen for an inspiring performance of the First, followed swiftly by the Fourth, conducted by Peter Ruzicka; and tomorrow evening, Daniel Barenboim will lead the Berlin Staatskapelle in the elegiac Ninth.

However, in a true rarity, the German capital couldn’t hold a candle to its smaller neighbour to the east, Leipzig, which is pulling out all the stops for its International Mahler Festival, which began on the eve of anniversary and runs until the 29th.

This complete overview of Mahler’s symphonies features a delirious array of top-notch orchestras (including three that Mahler himself led in performances of his own work) and an impressive assortment of supplementary lectures, artist interviews, film screenings and exhibitions. It is without a doubt the grandest gesture yet during these back-to-back anniversary seasons. Then again, that Leipzig should enjoy such an honour doesn’t seem entirely unfair; this eminently musical city did indeed play a crucial role in Mahler’s development as a composer.   

Mahler himself was only 26 when he arrived in Leipzig in 1886 to serve as second Kapellmeister at the opera. Although his duties were focused squarely on the podium (he led a whopping 188 performances during his two-year stint here), it was in Leipzig that Mahler turned earnestly to symphonic composition. “It was in fact when he came to Leipzig that Mahler started to discover the symphonic universe of his own with the First Symphony,” explained Riccardo Chailly in his office at the Gewandhaus before the opening of the festival on May 17.

It was also in Leipzig that the composer deepened his exploration of Des Knaben Wunderhorn, the collection of poems that inspired much of his first four symphonies. During this period Mahler also became involved in completing Carl Maria von Weber’s unfinished opera Die Drei Pintos.
For Chailly the festival, curated by the Gewandhaus, is the fulfillment of a dream he has had ever since becoming the Gewandhausorchester’s musical director in 2005: “Since that time I really wished this Mahler festival to happen for the centenary of the death of Gustav Mahler but in particular to make known to the world that the roots of the Gewandhausorchester are linked directly with Mahler because of those years when he was here as a Second Kapellmeister”. Chailly enumerated some qualities his musicians brought to their reading of Mahler. “The sound, the colour of the Gewandhaus is one of the oldest. There is darkness but transparency at the same time, which is a unique, late romantic sound, which is perfectly born for these scores.”

These aspects certainly informed the Gewandhausorchester’s finely honed and heart-stopping performance of the Second. In the final movements, soloists Chrisiane Oelze and Sarah Connolly – both last-minute replacements – sang with accuracy and feeling, and were joined by the expertly prepared forces of the Berlin Radio Choir and MDR Radio Choir.

Chailly seemed justifiably proud of the programme he had helped put together. “We have the most representative orchestras in the world which can prove how Mahler can also change relationships to his music according to on the sound identity of an orchestra, sound culture, sound tradition of an orchestra. And I think we’ve selected the most significant orchestras,” he claimed.

Looking at the line-up, it was hard to disagree: in addition to the appearances from the Gewandhaus Orchestera, the festival also welcomed the Staatskapelle Dresden and Esa-Pekka Salonen in the Third, the Bavarian Radio SO with Yannick Nézet-Séguin in the Seventh, Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic in the Fifth, the MDR SO led by Jun Märkl in the Tenth, the London Symphony Orchestra and Valery Gergiev in the First, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Fabio Luisi in Das Lied von der Erde.

And that was just the first week.

Yet to come are appearances by the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich and David Zinman (the Sixth), the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Daniel Harding (the Fourth), and the Vienna Philharmonic and Daniele Gatti (the Ninth). To cap the festival, Chailly and his band will reclaim the stage for three performances of the gargantuan Eighth.

“I’m very proud because in less than two weeks you can have all this, and the comparison is a healthy competition to everybody,” Chailly added with a smile.

International Mahler Festival Leipzig runs until May 29