Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 30.10.2006

The Berlin performance of "Idomeneo" is not to be cancelled after all. (more here) Heinrich Wefing interviews the German correspondent of Al Jazeera, Aktham Suliman, who explains why he didn't bother reporting on the affair at all. "My editor in chief would have asked immediately: 'Who was insulted? Where are the opera's critics?' I would have have to answer: 'Nobody is insulted but the police was assuming that somebody might be.' That's not news."


Die Welt 30.10.2006

In his series on the Berlin Philharmoniker, Eckhard Fuhr portrays conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, the central figure in classical music during the Third Reich whose complicity with the Nazi's was cause for a de-Nazification process by the Americans after the war and dismissal from his post with Berlin's renowned orchestra. "Well beyond the break from 1933 to 1945, he maintained the belief that the ideal of a cultural tradition could have survived the civilisational rupture. This conviction can be readily dismissed as an attempt by the German bourgeoisie to escape historical responsibility. Today, as the search for traditions that have defined the future becomes more pressing, one is more careful with such judgements. Furtwängler unsettles. Furtwängler makes us curious. And it's clear to anyone who has heard his recordings with the Berlin Philharmonic from those apocalyptic years, as the Germany that Furtwängler represented in all his greatness, crankiness and helplessness was turning to rubble and ashes, that he was fully aware that his music was the swan song of a culture in downfall. It was not the pathos of perseverance but rather a harking back, a taking leave."


Süddeutsche Zeitung 30.10.2006

With his staging in Hamburg, Nicolas Stemann (more) has turned Elfriede Jelinek's play "Ulrike Maria Stuart," into an "intelligent, scary revue," says Christopher Schmidt. "Following 'Das Werk' and 'Babel,' 'Ulrike Maria Stuart' is Jelinek's third dramatic text that Stemann simply ignores in order to give it new meaning. This conforms to Jelinek's dream of a director for her world premiere because she applies the renunciation of power typical of her texts on herself and enjoys the desecration as any martyr would. Stemann for his part says that he is not the junk-clearing commando for the sentimental detritus of an elderly lady. Instead of letting Stemann clear out her head, she left it to him entirely. A couple of revolutionary romanticisms remained of a salon lounge in retro-chic style. Stemann deconstructs Jelinek's deconstructions and it's true what the author-mother says about her director son, that her texts 'trigger' his creativity. Stemann loads up and leaves behind scorched landscapes of text, in the form of weapons, water bombs, paint bombs and toy pump guns."

Kent Nagano marks his debut as conductor of Munich's Staatsoper with a double bill: Richard Strauss' "Salome" followed by a world premiere of Wolfgang Rihm's "The Enclosure," which makes thematic and musical references to the Strauss opera. Reinhard J. Brembeck is deeply impressed. "Finally the conductor has arrived in Munich. His orchestra, which after years with Zubin Mehta had abandoned itself to great flowing feeling, suddenly sounds interesting down to the last detail. In Nagano, Munich finally has a conductor who is not only willing and able to revive great traditions but also to place them in a contemporary context, investing them with new meaning."


Die Tageszeitung 30.10.2006

In the opinion pages, Michael Kiefer does not think much of the survey conducted by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation of Muslim women who wear headscarves in Germany. One of the conclusions drawn from the survey is that the values and attitudes of these women hardly differ from those of their unscarved compatriots. Kiefer has his doubts about the choice of survey participants: "They were selected with the help of certain mosque associations. This approach inevitably leads to distortions. And this is clearly evident in the educational level of the participants: 43 percent of them have a high school or college degree, at the same time another 31 percent have access to an advanced technical college entrance qualification, to O-levels or secondary school certificates, or a high school certificate with an apprenticeship. And that is anything but typical. In a city like Berlin, there were 183 Turkish pupils among the 13,000 highschool graduates of last year; thus the number of graduates of Turkish background was well under 10 percent."

Saturday 28 October, 2006

Die Welt, 28.10.2006

In the literature pages, writer Georg M. Oswald looks at the memoirs of former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (more) with reference to the first page of Rousseau's "Confessions": "Rousseau was not a man to think humbly of himself. In cited passages, he wrote: 'I am not made like any of those whom I have seen up to now, and I venture to guess that I am not fashioned like anyone else alive.' Gerhard Schröder is yet another who does not think modestly of himself – but unfortunately he is fashioned just like all those people who overrate themselves."