Translated material
Politics, artist, madness
Politics, artist, madness. Caesar on the limousine, singers on rockets, an opera star in the suicide belt - art defiantly exploits relevant subjects. The Salzburg festival completes the season of European music views 
The opera program of the festival is made to the tastes of sponsors: many stars, there are few sensible performances. The “Magic Flute” with Nikolaus Arnonkur for the conductor’s remote control, “Ariadne on the Naksos” Richard Strauss ... Julius Caesar in Egypt promised a lot of Handel in the production of Moshe Laiser and Patris Curher - there are outstanding voices, starting with Bartoli's Cleopatra Party. But the authors transferred the action to the modern Middle East and modernized it with irony over the European Cois, which forgives tirans for the sake of oil. Actual - but the directorly worked out without details. He will receive a lot of the day, from the suitcase with the symbols of the European Union to the change of power with the participation of external forces. Caesar (Counterpheries of Andreas Shol) enters the stage on the limousine, singers fly on missiles, and the sexton (Philip of the Yarussian) put on the mortal belt. But the relevance does not even create poetics, individual scenes, no matter how funny they are, do not develop into a whole. And Julius Caesar turned out to be nothing more than a mild joke.
Gesture over brackets
The main event of the opera section was the “soldiers” of Bernd-Alois Zimmerman in the production of Ingo Metzmakher and director Alvis Hermanis, who first put the opera. The libretto is based on the play by Jacob Lenz, which is not appreciated by contemporaries, how an innocent girl is made by a soldier's whore. Lenz talks about human stupidity and limitation. In the army, these qualities, in his opinion, for some reason concentrate. And in ordinary life the situation is no better. In the end, the girl Marie (her American Laura Aikin sings remarkably) Sends his father on the false path. The dictatorship of the family is a little softer than the aggression of the world. The performance turned out to be not only anti -ministerial and anti -war, but also politically relevant. At the press conference, Alvis Hermanis said that he would like to devote the production of Pussy Riot. It was quoted, but few expected that the inscription Free Pussy Riot would appear on the screen with the titles after the final. Some showed it to the neighbors, others applauded. For Hermanis, who is not going to put in Moscow in the near future - he is not satisfied with the political atmosphere - this is a gesture. So he makes his assessment to Russian politics. By the way, the play about the playwright itself - Lenz (so called - “Lenz”) caused a splash in Salzburg. The Austrian Cornelia Rainer put him with her troupe “Russian slides”. The coincidence does not seem accidental: the writer died in Moscow in May 1792, right on the street. But the plot of the performance is connected with Alsace, where Lenz spent three weeks visiting Pastor Oberlin, who had to accept geniuses with his inability to observe generally accepted norms of behavior and, who was also behind the facet of a nervous breakdown. The answer of the pastor is an understanding and tolerance, which today can often only be dreamed of.
Madness
It is believed that opera and theater are primarily a love story. But often these are the stories of politicians who do not know shame, and artists who lose their minds. In the mass consciousness, the artist is not from this world (at least earlier, when the prices of the art market were not like today). He is related to the inventor and scientist - he is engaged in things that are not clear to everyone. And if the case is also medical? Sometimes the diagnosis causes sympathy, sometimes becomes the reason for the art research.
The diagnosis of Vaclav Nizhinsky was determined early: the career of the dancer ended when he was not even 30. Dedicated to him by the opera of the modern German composer Detlev Glaunta, built in the diaries that Nizhinsky kept in 1918 before schizophrenia worsened. Opera - about the occurrence of darkness, about immersion in the world, from where there is no return. The performance at the festival in the Bragery turned out to be as heavy as its plot. But the mythological figure of Nizhinsky nevertheless appears from the darkness of the author’s plan.
Interest in those who are knocked out of the general series is largely related to eternal questions: what is art, who is an artist? How excusable to him is the deviation from the norm?
Scandal behind the stage
Russian singers in the West are increasingly in the center of scandals. Many of them became stars, special attention to them. You can’t call this attitude soft, especially since they are sometimes expressed very doubtfully. They say that Anna Netrebko pushed away many fans from the assessment of the Pussy Riot sentence. In an interview at the end of August, she called the court a necessary step-they say, Putin had to somehow react, otherwise everyone would begin to jump along the altars. Since the verdict was perplexed by Europe, the press was full of first -headed articles from Moscow and Moscow, here the popular singer recalled all the dark places of its biography: receiving Austrian citizenship, bypassing the procedure, that German did not learn, but he willingly gives an interview to the Boulevard's press (Krone Zeitung, where her statement was made about PUSSY Riot, you can’t call a high -quality newspaper). And at the same time it supports Putin, who is ready to endure in the West in the West, but he likes him a little there.
Another scandal erupted in Germany, where the soloist of Mariinsky Bas Bariton Evgeny Nikitin was forced to leave the city before the opening of the Byirot festival. His party in the “Flying Dutch” was hastily handed over to another singer. The reason was a video recording of the 90s replicated on the eve of the premiere on the main German television channel, when Nikitin was still fond of rock. On it, a half -naked musician plays drums, it is clear that he is abundantly tattooed. One of the tattoos looks like a swastika.
In an interview given to the scandal, Nikitin carefully waves his hand about the errors of youth. It is clear that the Germans in connection with Nazi symbols would like a more intelligible statement. The Russian Internet also flared up on the history of Nikitin. Some believe: so it is necessary, sooner or later there is responsibility for the unusual mistakes of youth. Others: He is an outstanding singer, it is more important. The delusions of youth or the irresponsibility of the artist, not ashamed of his mistakes, - the dispute came to a dead end. Nikitin is one of the best Wagnerian performers in the world, but the Germans refused a wonderful bass bariton. The farther the war, the stricter Germany judges.
But in the Russian career, this story will not affect the singer: on September 18, in St. Petersburg, he sings the Shaklovita party in Khovanschina.