IN THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY OF THE SOUL
Corinna Kirchhoff takes the role of Genia in Arthur Schnitzler’s tragicomedy
Corinna Kirchhoff is known as the “queen of pain”. An actress whose ability to portray suffering is imbued with a mysterious enchantment. Her desire to cross borders in the undiscovered country of the soul thereby prevents her from indulging in sentimentality. The vulnerability of her characterisations of women can be coupled equally with a fervour of the heart as with a frightening emotional emptiness. However, there is always an intimation of a search for oneself, the struggle for one’s own identity, one’s own endangered image. Sensational debut with Chekhov’s Three Sisters Her sensational debut in 1984 at the Schaubühne in Berlin as Irina in Peter Stein’s staging of Chekhov’s Three Sisters was one of those theatrical events that no one who was there will ever forget. “A tall, slender, graceful girl with all the hopes and intentions, all the excitement and desires young people have in adolescence but also with a premonition of age, of a pre-experience of futility and early grief”, wrote Peter Iden at the time in the Frankfurter Rundschau. Helena in Peter Stein’s Production of Faust With Peter Stein she has created many delightful figures and remained loyal to him for his production of Faust in which she played Helena. However, she undertook her “journeys of discovery to the innermost depths”, as she herself describes it, from the 1990s and in particular with stage-director Andrea Breth, playing Hedda Gabler and Stella at the Schaubühne and Maria Stuart at the Burgtheater. Now Corinna Kirchhoff is to play the role of Genia in Breth’s staging of Schnitzler’s Das weite Land (The Undiscovered Country), entering a vicious circle in the cynical love game of her husband, where she as one who loves can only lose, but she struggles not to lose herself as well.
Karin Kathrein
Alfred Hrdlicka,
Study on Faust, 1982
Arthur Schnitzler – Das weite Land
Stage director Andrea Breth
Stage design Erich Wonder
Costumes Susanne Raschig
Music Elena Chernin
Lighting design Alexander Koppelmann
Dramaturgy Wolfgang Wiens
Friedrich Hofreiter Sven-Eric Bechtolf
Genia Corinna Kirchhoff
Anna Meinhold-Aigner Angela Schmid
Otto Johannes Zirner
Doktor von Aigner Gerd Böckmann
Frau Wahl Elisabeth Orth
Gustav Denis Petkovic
Erna Birgit Minichmayer
Natter Michael König
Adele Andrea Clausen
Doktor Franz Mauer Werner Wölbern
Demeter Stanzides Franz J. Csencsits
Paul Kreindl Cornelius Obonya
Albertus Rhon Franz Josef Steffens
Marie Swetlana Schönfeld
Serknitz Reinhard Firchow
Doktor Meyer Kurt Radeke
Rosenstock Wolfgang Gasser
New production: 15 August 2002
16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 August 2002
Performances begin at 7 p.m.
Landestheater
All performances are sold out
Telephone: 0043 662 8045-500
Telefax: 0043 662 8045-555
E-mail: info@salzburgfestival.at