Die Zeit, 28.07.2005

Georg Seeßlen looks at the impact of the "DVD attack" on cinema. The number of movie-goers has fallen dramatically this year, and critics assume this is due to the DVD. But Seeßlen thinks that the cinema itself "is working hard at its own dissolution". "A film made for DVD is never complete, because it can always be changed with new material, extended and embellished (it's the spectator, after all, who puts together the final version) and, with the various side and background stories, it effectively dismisses its own commentary. Thus, the film on DVD subsumes its own critical reflection in other media, it even contains its own audience response: the blablabla about the film."

Evelyn Finger celebrates the Fabrik Potsdam, home to the most courageous dance theatre in Germany. To represent culture's the long-term emergency situation, "the company has found a nice image. A couple sets a table that has two normal and two short legs. The grotesque piece of furniture can't stand on its own, so the protagonists have to inconspicuously keep the thing upright. When the woman goes to get the cutlery, the man collapses the table, when she comes back, he runs away – it's a trading of places that is danced with deceptive ease so that we almost miss what's missing from the system; the lovers have no free hand to hug each other, no chance to interrupt the constant routine of preventing the crisis. 'Do you want to die with me' is the name of this piece, based on the letters of Heinrich von Kleist."

Christoph Marthaler's production at the Bayreuth festival has turned "Tristan and Isolde" into an "anti love utopia", writes Claus Spahn. "In the case of Isolde, her fury that her lover has died before she arrived is stronger than her devotion to him. She sings her trance-like 'Mild und leise...', lies down on her sick bed and pulls the white sheet over her head – a lover's death from frustration, no melting of the soul." Spahn is in awe of the singers but damning of conductor Eiji Oue's interpretation, "cowardly and half-hearted, righteous at best."


Süddeutsche Zeitung, 28.07.2005

A show trial is going on in Rome on illegal art acquisitions by the Getty Museum. Henning Klüver explains why the former curator Marion True is being charged in 42 cases of handling stolen goods and speculates that a guilty finding could have consequences for famous works such as Venus of Morgantina. The archaeologist Michael Müller-Karpe is aware of many black sheep in Germany. "It is common practice in museums to take objects of questionable origins on loan from private collectors, to exhibit them, thus certifying the object and raising its value. A museum will not present falsifications. If a collector bequeaths one of ten objects to a museum, he gets a donation receipt, even in Germany." And Johan Schloeman explains that the plundering of antiquity has been going on for a long time.


Die Welt, 28.07.2005

Katarzyna Stoklosa reports on the campaign slogan of the young Polish nationalists whose platform is anti- Germany, the EU and Western decadence: "EU enthusiasts are Homosexuals". "Right nationalist forces are gaining ground in Poland. They are finding support in the highest circles. In contrast, the liberal 'Parade of Equality' that was demonstrating for more tolerance of homosexuals, had to be held illegally in Warsaw. Meanwhile the 'Parade of Normality' enjoys absolute protection." The initiator was the All-Polish Youth organisation, which calls "for a united, national and strictly Catholic state and proclaims the fight against liberal, pluralist,West-leaning constitutional state."


Frankfurter Rundschau, 28.07.2005

Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich declares that Nikolaus Lehnhoff's production of Franz Schreker's opera "Die Gezeichneten" shines out at the Salzburg Festival, if only because of tenor Robert Brubaker who plays Alviano. "It has a piquancy all of its own when in the love scene at the end of the second act, the impassioned woman rips the clothes from her body of her angelic partner (who is tiptoeing round her like a dwarf faun) to leave him standing there simulating nakedness in a tight body suit (one of the lofty high points in Lehnhoff's micro-precision direction). The great surprise is that out of this slim body, a sonorous, powerful voice emanates vibrating with a immense nuances of expression.