| He was born to the family
of a famous conductor in Frankfurt on Main in January 1945,
in a bomb shelter with American-British bombs roaring around.
His mother was an opera singer. Most of his conscious life
passed in GDR. He studied opera directing at the Berlin Hans
Eisler High School of Music. Since his young years he was
notable for his independent temper and dislike of stiffened
academic traditions, they went against the grains with him.
He hesitated to choose between a career of a racer and that
of a musician, with the benefit of the latter being his mother’s
contribution. A telling episode: the 16-year-old boy rejected
an invitation on the part of Winifred Wagner herself, the
daughter-in-law of Richard Wagner and, by the way, Hitler’s
ex-favourite, to visit one of Wagner’s performances in the
citadel " German Imperial Spirit ", Bayreuth Theatre.
Peter, who arrived at the old Wagnerite’s place on a motorcycle
to get shelter from the rain, declared to the stunned Frau,
that he would rather go to the cinema instead…
Now Peter Konvitschny is one of the most
authoritative opera directors at the global scale, and he
has won the title of " the Director of the Year "
five times in Germany. For the last few years he has produced
three Wagner’s operas - Parsifal, Lohengrin, Òristan und Isolde
on the theatre stages in Munich, Hamburg and Barcelona. Among
his productions are Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, La Boheme
by Puccini and Verdi’s Falstaff… Soon one more Wagner’s opera
title will be added to this list - Der Fliegende Hollander
and one more world class opera company – Moscow Bolshoi Opera,
which has become the first Russian troupe to engage Konvitschny.
On June 20, this year, the Art Chief of the Company Àlexander
Vedernikov will conduct the premiere.
We met the director after a rehearsal. His look was far from
being smart: a shirt with its sleeves rolled up, his forehead
all in sweat and his eyes tiredly smiling towards us…
- Mr. Konvitschny,
as I see it, the work is in full swing. But isn’t it a great
risk to mount the Wagner, this, maybe, the most German of
all German composers, in Russia, where both directing and
singing traditions are quite different from Western ones…
- The Bolshoi is one of the best-known
theatres of the world, and I wouldn’t be quite honest if I
said that the invitation here, to the Bolshoi, was an ordinary
event for me. And what is still more important I have always
been attracted by the East. By the way, I should say that
my theatre differs from the Western European theatre as much
as Russian theatre from European in general. On the whole
director’s theatre in the West lives up to the old traditions.
Sometimes as “a bait” of purely external character they use
some unexpected, unusual place - for example, a slaughterhouse
- and play a traditional Rigoletto against this background.
So much to their "modernism". In my turn I try to
look into the essence of classical plays from today's positions.
- There is a logical
discrepancy, isn’t there? The conductor and all the cast must
precisely follow the concept of the composer and reproduce
it, while the director for some reason is not obliged to follow
the plot at all... Now and again producers transfer action
into some other epoch, country, they change the concept of
the characters. For example, àn American, Francheska Zambello,
when mounting her own version of Prokofiev’s Fiery Angel for
the Bolshoi, claimed that she sees this gothic novella about
an obsessed woman as an allegory of the oppressed position
of the artist in totalitarian society…
- Unfortunately, I haven’t see Madam
Zambello’s work. But I reckon that a theatre is no museum,
and its task can’t be just keeping the productions in order
to sometimes amaze people by its out-of-date content. We must
wake up the society, force people to reflect first of all
on today's problems. And for me the things that happen onstage
are an invitation to discuss the challenges of modern life.
Therefore in each case it is necessary to anew get sure of
how vital the message of the production for the spectators
is. And in accordance with this, perhaps, to transfer the
action to any new interiors or epochs if required. For example,
my Flying Dutch isn’t supposed to be an exact image of the
performance of 160 years ago when premiered.
- And isn’t the
subject of love the Saviour, which this Wagner’s opera is
devoted to, essential enough today?
- But, yes, it is. It is for all the
times, certainly. All Wagner’s operas are devoted to love
and life as the things that should forever be at the top of
peoples’ values hierarchy. If we put at the top something
else, say, power, instead of them, we’ll lose love and sensation
of completeness of life…
- Judging from
modern theatre practice, can you say that in a great opera
the music is more valuable than its plot?
- Yes, music for me is the main spring
of information. In general in any opera there are three categories
of text. Besides the music, there are a verbal libretto and
composer’s stage directions. It’s these directions that very
quickly get out of date. Because they characterise the historical
context in which the production was originally created i.e.
stereotypes of human behaviour, tempo of life, means of communication
of the period, etc. But my objective is to reveal the author’s
concept to today's spectator! In what way can I convey, for
example, all the depth of tragedy of a suicide the heroine
in The Flying Dutch makes up her mind to commit? Two centuries
ago such a suicide would be something exclusive, a catastrophe.
And what can we see today? If you open any Moscow or Berlin
tabloid there are ten suicides and 60-70 murders per week
in there. Naturally, I have to appeal to some new means to
make today's spectator take what is going onstage as a tragedy.
- In Germany, as
far as I can imagine, Brecht is paid special attention to
as the father of theatre reforms as such, as well as Felsenstein,
who is known as the most outstanding opera producer of the
second half of the ÕÕth century…
- Through Felsenstein’s art I got acquainted
with Stanislavsky’s system, and for me psychological accuracy
is decisive. But I rather widely use the approach introduced
by Brecht when the actors now and again get abstracted from
the role, plot; the action is now and then interrupted, and
the actor appears on the proscenium and sings his song. I
also appreciate the experience of Meyerkhold, Tairov, Vakhtangov,
Eisenstein - all the people who suggested some new theatrical
models instead of Stanislavsky’s classical “system of illusions"
…
- If I took you
right, Russia is part of Oriental world for you. The world,
which attracts as well as frightens off many of western intellectuals…
- In the German language the two words
“Morgenland” (East) and “Abendland” (West) make a very expressive
pun, if translated literally, they mean “the land of dawn”
and “the land of sunset”. Western and Eastern civilisations
have different attitude to belief and reason, to matter and
spirit, to the sky and the ground. The West for many well-known
reasons developed much faster. But the faster something develops,
the sooner it wears out. We are sure to be in the final phase
of our civilisation. Like Egypt, which existed five thousand
years, and they were none the sillier than we are now, but
they could do nothing to prevent their civilisation’s slow
destruction. This fact invariably shocks me: gone is the great
culture, the sand got it buried … Yes, the globalisation erases
all the borders. Today Pushkin wouldn’t have to feel humiliated
by asking the Tsar for permission to visit Europe. But only
think of the price - so severe, devastating in terms of spiritual
values, the process is! Believe me, in East Germany I witnessed
the beginning of the new capitalist epoch, I saw capital arriving
from abroad and settling down as it’s happening in Russia
nowadays. I was bitterly shocked by the scale and methods.
It was no idyllic “merging”, it looked like an attack, an
invasion. Power of money is surely the strongest type of totalitarism.
- So, you share
many people’s opinion that Russia, “the cradle and home of
the spiritual” has future while the pragmatic West sows the
seeds of its own destruction and therefore is doomed?
- All that is more complicated than it
seems to be. It is uncomfortably odd for me to see here, in
Moscow, all these innumerable signboards and posters of Western
firms. I believe, in 1917 the mankind had a unique historical
alternative way to go but people didn’t take advantage of
it. Though, the idea of capitalism is unequivocally brutal
as it is. Hasn’t Wagner in his Ring of the Nibelungs proved
the message that evil power of gold is pointing the way to
the chasm? By the way, 130 years ago, Nietzsche, Wagner’s
admirer, wrote that the Europeans had killed the God. And
now they worship at the temple of Mammon.
- So, cruelty and
absurd of Russian Revolution don’t make you feel confused,
do they? Say, Lenin’s orders to murder hundred thousands of
priests? Or if come closer to your profession, early Soviet
era attempts to adjust classical masterpieces to the Soviet
ideology needs, like a rework of Glinka’s “The Life for Tsar
" into the disgusting “Life for the Soviets”?
- I’m too well aware of all this. But
it’s again the idea, the essence of socialism I’m talking
about, not its perversion and misinterpretation. The problem
is, perhaps, that it was offered to the mankind too early.
When he spoke about revolutions, Marx meant economically advanced
countries. Lenin was too impatient and discredited the idea…
- A hundred years
ago, at the restless edge of the ÕÕ century, art revolutionaries
reckoned they were witnessing the last moments of classical
opera. Now in many countries there is a strong revival, renaissance
of opera art, which is invariably attributed to the growth
in the number of middle class people, out of which opera goers
are “recruited”. Does the trend contradict the idea of an
opera in its classical concept? If we turn to Wagner, Musorgsky
and other great composers of the past, their operas were intended
for all the people to listen to. Not for the well-off middle
class only…
- There is a dramatic contradiction about
it! I am far from inviting people to deliberately and constantly
feel hungry, but full stomach prevents people from taking
in profound ideas, instead it lures them into quick forgetting
that there are too many people whose living is far less comfortable
than theirs. Realising this made Verdy and Wagner feel desperate…
It makes me feel desperate, too… for example, when I see the
public waiting for the upper C with the only interest whether
the tenor will manage it or not. And if he does, all the other
things fade, be it a moment of the hero’s suffering or death.
The spectators are roaring with delight. The same happens
with the ballet spectators who tend to heatedly appreciate
technical filigree but turn a blind eye to the feelings and
emotions onstage. In my opinion all that reminds more of something
akin to pornography, not art. Because, what pornography is…it’s
love-making without love…
- Then, maybe,
being slightly out of the framework of my role as a journalist,
I would dare to advise you to go to work in some provincial
towns of Russia with strong opera theatres. No Moscow, no
Petersburg next time. The public in, say, Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg,
Nizhni Novgorod, Perm …is completely different from the metropolitan
theatregoers.
- Do you mean they are better?
- I think, yes.
They are those who can hardly afford a two or three hundred
dollar-worth ticket, but they are free from metropolitan snobbism
and their reaction is far more vivid…
- You know if you undertake to work with
the audience systematically, you may very well change it.
Within 4 or 5 years in Humburg I have produced 9 performances.
My theatre, I hope, is rather simple (though, hopefully, not
primitive) and not meant for experts only. And I see the people
growing more and more sympathetic. The four city’s national
universities, all of them, invite me to give lectures, which
are quite popular with students. I receive plenty of letters,
where theatregoers confess that my productions have got them
to understand modern life better. Actually I clearly realise
what has impressed them, the great opera masterpieces, not
me, but not without my assistance. It’s very dear to me when
a dialogue with the spectator occurs, he gains a deeper insight
into the ethical concept of the original masterpiece. So,
as you can see middle class people are not hopeless at all.
But to broaden their horizon, this process of acquainting
with classical music and all this should start as early as
possible, at school, perhaps. Otherwise they will always be
happy with cheap, mass sort of entertainment such as pop-music
on radio and so on. You see, opera is not as simple as just
coming to an opera house and getting pleasure, some basic
knowledge is obviously needed. Unless you have got acquainted
with this rather complicated art it will pass beyond your
perception, you’ll understand nothing and won’t get any pleasure.
- And your children,
do they love opera? Or for them it’s "rubbish",
the same as you felt about àcademical Bayreuth productions?
- I have one daughter, and she treats
favourably some of my works. But truly speaking she is a professional
musician, a violinist. And she is already thinking of producing
operas.
- I see. She’s
not an illustrative example, perhaps. And grandchildren?
- I’m not aware of any yet, you know
(laughs). But from my rich experience in communicating with
the youth, who I see both at my performances and lectures
I know that opera’s not going into oblivion. So I do not believe
in its coming to an end.
- Here you have
got, I’d say, imbued with the Russian spirit and, perhaps,
it has occurred to you to produce something Russian on your
returning to Germany?
- Yes, I have been thinking of staging
a Russian opera here, in Russia.
- Oho!.. And which
in particular?
- No particular plans yet. "Înegin",
"Susanin", " Boris Godunov" … There are
six or seven really great Russian operas and it’s going to
be one of them… To start with… And I’d rather put all of them.
That would be really challenging to see how Russians will
apprehend their national masterpieces produced and staged
by a German.
- Aren’t you afraid?
Our critics have a reputation for being malicious…
- I used to be afraid of… but no longer.
|
