Dreams · Hopes · Exploring Emotions
Stage director Willy Decker makes his debut in Salzburg
Willy Decker was born in Cologne and studied music, theatre science, German literature and singing. He staged his first productions during the 1980s, including the world premiere of Hans Werner Henze’s Pollicino in Montepulciano in 1980, and soon aroused international attention. Since then he has been in great demand but also knows how to say “no”, as he proved in 1998 when he turned down the offer of directing Lohengrin in Bayreuth.
Willy Decker
Willy Decker’s productions – he usually works together with designer Wolfgang Gussmann – are not always universally acclaimed. The spaces on stage are clearly structured, symmetrical and have distinct colours, thus they become dramaturgical spaces. Decker is not a fan of decorative clutter. For instance, his Don Giovanni lives in a cosmic space on his catalogue full of the names of men (!) and women; Decker’s Lulu has to defend herself in a veritable bullring against male molesters.
Decker often shows dreamlike spaces, spaces full of hope or those that tell stories about hopes that were dashed, and he seems to undertake an exploration of emotions. Some reviewers have found his productions on the one hand “sterile”, “statuesque”; others consider them to be “hyperactive” and see characters who are psychologically deformed, emotionally confused and tortured by desire on stage.
Again and again Decker resorts to surprising images: at the end of Act Two his Tristan does not throw himself onto Melot’s sword but scratches his own eyes out; Isolde does the same. Only when they die do they regain their sight. Decker seems to be attracted by broken characters and losers such as Hermann in Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame. One critic described his production as “Horribly beautiful”, “psychologically much more merciless and brutal than the music sounds, a salon of hell underlined in morbid minor tones.”
Decker loves to concentrate sequences of action onto simple patterns or to accentuate them by movement. “Sometimes”, as another critic stated, “this can take us almost to the limits of monumental kitsch”. Tosca on the other hand became a “perfectly rehearsed operatic crime story with characters acting passionately.” An English journalist paid Decker the nicest compliment of all for his production of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle: “Decker always dramatises, never explains, and the greatest virtue of his staging is the way it allows the opera to keep all its ambiguities”.
The premiere of Decker’s first production for the Salzburg Festival – Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s opera Die tote Stadt – takes place on 15 August 2004 in the Kleines Festspielhaus.
Erich Wolfgang Korngold wrote this opera at the age of twenty. Die tote Stadt is based on the symbolistic novel Bruge-la-morte by Georges Rodenbach. The action swings between dream and reality through various visions of the main character Paul who believes that the dancer Marietta is the reincarnation of his deceased wife Marie until he realises that the memory of her made him have fantastic delusions.
Derek Weber
Erich Wolfgang Korngold
DIE TOTE STADT
New production
Conductor Donald Runnicles
Stage director Willy Decker
Stage and costume design Wolfgang Gussmann
Lighting design Wolfgang Goebbel
Chorus master Rupert Huber
Dramaturge Klaus Bertisch
Paul Torsten Kerl
Marietta / Die Erscheinung Mariens Angela Denoke
Frank / Fritz Bo Skovhus Brigitta Daniela Denschlag
Juliette Simina Ivan
Lucienne Stella Grigorian
Gaston Lukas Gaudernak
Victorin Eberhard Lorenz
Graf Albert Michael Roider
Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus • Vienna Philharmonic
Premiere 15 August, 7 p.m.
Further performances
18, 21, 24, 27 and 30 August, 7 p.m.
Kleines Festspielhaus
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Titel and Salzburg-Impressions © Thomas Klinger, Munich