A sensual and emotional labyrinth
A conversation with Stefan Herheim, stage director of Die Entführung aus dem Serail
Stefan Herheim spent the first 24 years of his life with his parents and an older brother and sister in Norway. He learned to play the cello and devoted his youth primarily to the opera. The images that came to his mind while listening to music made him want to become a stage director. Herheim studied at the Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in Hamburg with Götz Friedrich. The work he chose for his final examination Die Zauberflöte was a great success and marked the start of a journey into the world of opera today.
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The Norwegian stage director Stefan Herheim revives Die Entführung with a cast of mainly new singers for 2004. |
What is your first thought when you are invited to stage a production?
Listen, listen and listen again. I study the score and literature associated with the work. The music contains a dynamism and initially that is what I am most concerned with. The power of the music and the aura of a work evoke images and ideas that I underpin with a lot of literature. This is especially so where mysterious caesuras are recognisable in the score because that is where I see my chance to develop the story into exciting music theatre.
Do you regard stage directing also as directing people?
Yes, because in music-theatre it is ultimately a question of understanding people.
Last year you said that one has to find the alien element in oneself.
That was one of the underlying ideas for Die Entführung. In this opera I want to show that life is a sensual and emotional labyrinth. It is an emotional landscape from which one cannot escape, indeed that is something one should not even attempt. It’s like imagining yourself always in a new place although you actually only discover yourself. It is also the attempt to say that these figures are actually archetypes in a stringent dramaturgical network. Each role exists in each figure, not only the Bassa Selim. In the entire piece there are actually only two persons: man and woman – man and woman as humans, as split, dialectic beings, who from their contradictory positions, try to arrive at the truth.
How do you see the dialogue between the stage director and the designer?
I also used to design stage sets. For me it is more or less impossible to imagine spaces without figures and figures without spaces. This often makes things difficult for my stage designer because they perhaps feel somewhat restricted to begin with. It is all the more important to define oneself as a production team and regard the project as an entire process.
In other words your team has to be able to project themselves into your head and your world of ideas?
And vice versa. For others it may well be the normal process that a stage director talks in relatively abstract terms about his ideas on a piece and then a space is presented to him. In my case the space becomes specific at a very early phase because I form productions from the dynamics of the music. I sense intuitively if I need a lot of movement at certain moments and the singers have to be able to float and fly in these dynamics. In Salzburg I also had the need to work with video. My life is determined by the coming together of consciousness and unconsciousness. I am constantly alternating between the knowledge about my existence here and now and at the same time how intolerable existence is on this level. To paraphrase Verdi, ’the beauty of life exists for me in the fact that one can imitate reality well but it is much better to create it’.
We are much more than the exterior we have built up around us which can easily make us all slaves. I like working with mythical images because mythology, either in the religious or artistic sense, is always the attempt to find yourself again in the world where one is constantly lost and in which the past, present and future are reflected. That is why I love theatre so much, it is the temple of my religion.
There are moments when I know that I cannot come nearer to what is regarded as happiness in the sense of belonging, affection and the sharing of indefinable truths except in precisely this moment. Things that only function via music and via a language made up of every imaginable form of expression. To achieve this with collective forces is for me a great miracle, especially when the spark is transmitted to the audience. When they do not sit back comfortably in their chairs but try to find themselves where they believed they were safe.
What changes will there be this year in Die Entführung?
The concept remains the same; it will be revived with largely a new cast of singers working together as an ensemble. Last summer Laura Aikin, the new Blondchen, was very impressed by the production. She saw several rehearsals and performances and stepped in at short notice on one or two occasions. I am very pleased to be able to lead (abduct) her completely into this world. Conductor Marcello Viotti will of course bring many new ideas and suggestions into the production.
What was it like for you in Salzburg last year?
It was a wonderful and very intensive period of work. The singers were prepared to work almost 12 hours a day and that is absolutely incredible. Then we had the filming of the video sequences up to 3 a.m. in costume and make-up when the temperature was still 35° C. Then came the opening of the Festival when the city became very crowded. It felt as if we were somewhere else and each of us noticed subconsciously how we and the others came to terms with it. The process of analysing the piece became public. The imaginary separation between stage concept and performance by the singers opened up to a threatening degree but the quality we achieved together was marked by integrity.
What does theatre mean for you?
Real life. And having the feeling that it is worthwhile sacrificing one’s so-called private life for it.
Ulla Kalchmair interviewed Stefan Herheim.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Die Entführung
aus dem Serail
Revival
Conductor Marcello Viotti
Stage director Stefan Herheim
Stage and costume design Gottfried Pilz
Video fettFilm
Lighting design Konrad Lindenberg
Chorus master Rupert Huber
Dramaturge Wolfgang Willaschek
Bassa Selim *****
Konstanze Regina Schörg
Blonde Laura Aikin
Belmonte Christoph Strehl
Pedrillo Dietmar Kerschbaum
Osmin Peter Rose
Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus
Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra
Premiere 25 July, 7 p.m.
Further performances
27 July, 7 p.m.
29 July, 7 p.m.
31 July, 7 p.m.
2 August, 7 p.m.
Kleines Festspielhaus
Telephone +43 (0) 662 8045-500
Telefax +43 (0) 662 8045-555
info@salzburgfestival.at