 
Così fan tutte
Don Carlo, Falstaff
Die Fledermaus
Concert 2001
Narrated Music
Shir Ha Shirim
Notes
Paumgartner
Musically insured
who am i...?
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WHO AM I AND WHO COULD I BE?
Mariella Reininghaus about changes in fashion
In former times fashion was an expression of a cultural epoch that formed, characterised and forced people into a "time costume". Fashion was dominated not by random choice but by strict regulations. Eighteenth century legal codes contained instructions about dress that prescribed to each class within the social hierarchy how they had to dress "appropriately" and which prohibited the members of one class from wearing the dress of a different class. Fashionable accessories such as braiding, trimmings or a certain number of buttons denoted the profession or status within a guild. And when "whims" began to influence fashion, then only those that corresponded to the general cultural trend. This is recognised in female hairstyles, for instance, the Belle-poule style: a ship of this name had sunk an English frigate which gave rise to a hairstyle whereby the hair of the wig represented the sea and an exact model of the Belle-poule was plaited into it.
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| Gérard Uféras, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, 1991 |
Nowadays fashion is free: all forms of dress, disguise and undress are open to choice. One can move freely and decide between individualism and uniformity. In this historically unprecedented freedom we can even dream of identity and at the same time dream of being different. Multiplication of the exterior appearance was always regarded in fashion as a sign of power. It is the old topic of disguise and transformation - an essential element of divine freedom.
The aim of fashion is not alienation. Playing with clothes is like providing a keyboard with signs from which an established personality can select this or that for their daily pleasure according to their mood. The luxury lies in being able to duplicate and yet be stable enough never to lose oneself.
That is how fashion "plays" with the basic problem of human
consciousness: who am I?
It changes this into the question: who could I be?