TRAGEDY AS COMEDY
World premiere of Peter Turrini’s "Da Ponte in Santa Fé" on 29 July 2002
For two decades the drama of Turrini’s plays was determined by unearthing people again, the losers and victims of war, the simpletons and the dead. His method of taking a stance against the silent world of the fifties and sixties, which had no answers to offer, was to find biographies, to invent answers and make a theatrical adjustment of what had been suppressed.
Theatre is a place of deception
For a long time Turrini lived with the label of being a realistic playwright but in fact he never was one. Whereas his imagination was fired in the early years by excavations and finds, in later years he became fascinated by the inventions, lies and man’s self-deception. He invents unreal situations in order to approach the core, the reality of man. “Theatre is a place of deception”, he says, “everyone knows that something is being pretended here, that the actors standing up there are in disguise and that their stories are invented. Deception is admitted from the beginning and that is what makes it so credible. In so-called real life, in reports about real life, in the media it is constantly emphasised that everything is real and true, that the Bosnian corpse is real and that it is not an extra daubed with ketchup and paid $ 50 by a journalist to lie down in front of the camera. One fact follows after another and most of the time it is all lies. Thank goodness people believe us liars more and more and the factual reports less and less. Not until everything becomes deception, theatre, does real life begin.”
Silke Hassler
Extract from a lecture held in December 2000 in Tokyo
Alfred Hrdlicka,
After the performance, 1986
Peter Turrini
Da Ponte in Santa Fé
Stage director Claus Peymann
Stage sets Rolf Glittenberg
Costumes Miro Paternostro
Lorenzo da Ponte Jörg Gudzuhn
Nancy Krahl Elisabeth Schwarz
Dorka Duskova, Dolly Delors Annika Kuhl
James N. Brodnik, Opera Director Heribert Sasse
Castor Michael Rothmann
Pollux Boris Jakoby
Bambus Wilkinson Axel Werner
Ben Warren, Mayor Gerd Kunath
Miguel Chŕves, Sheriff Georgios Tsivanoglou
Joseph Bandelier, Commissioner for the Indians
Norbert Stöß
Don Elce Gerd Kunath
Juan Antonio Garcia, “El Magnifico“
Christoph Homberger
Bill Walker, Journalist Georgios Tsivanoglou
Billy Walker, Journalist Norbert Stöß
Peggy Two, Bolero Girl Mike Troste
Landestheater
World premiere on 29 July 2002
Further performances on 31 July
1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 August 2002
Performances begin at 7.30 p.m.
Tickets are available from
the Festival Ticket Office
for the performances on 31 July
1, 3, 4, 5 and 6 August
in the following categories: € 15, € 25, € 40,
€ 50, € 75, € 95 and € 120.
Telephone: 0043 662 8045-500
Telefax: 0043 662 8045-555
E-mail: info@salzburgfestival.at