Saturday 26 March, 2005

Die Welt, 26.03.2005

Jens Hartmann gives a preliminary all-clear from Moscow after the much anticipated premiere of a new opera at the Bolshoi Theatre: "Everything Russian author Vladimir Sorokin describes in his novel 'Blue Lard' (1999) is missing from the libretto to his opera 'Rosenthal's Children'. The 'Orthodox Standard Bearers', who turned the square in front of the Bolshoi Theatre into their own stage on the night of the premiere, can roll up their flags. The Putin youth group 'Walking Together', which wants to introduce censorship, can safely pack away its banner 'Pornographer and Excrement Eater'. And the members of the Russian State Duma who shouted 'scandal!' and 'censorship!' without having read the libretto may now be silent... The scandal did not occur." Click here for an English version of Jens Mühling's article on the opera and censorship trends in the Moscow art scene.


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 26.03.2005

Renowned theatre critic Gerhard Stadelmaier visits the Berliner Ensemble, where Luc Bondy has staged Botho Strauß' new play "Die eine und die andere" (The one and the other). Stadelmaier compliments Bondy on the performance, comparing it favourably to Dieter Dorn's staging, which premiered in the Residenz Theatre in Munich several weeks ago. But he does have one or two bones to pick with Bondy: "Dorn's directing gives an optimistic salvation to the characters who are stuck in their own mud – an airy fittingness to a couple no longer suited to each other. But Luc Bondy, the great couple specialist among the directors, cuts to the heart of it. The ingenious thing about the performance is that Bondy discovers flesh and blood under marble. Under the marble of Edith Clever, for example. The heroine of works directed by Peter Stein and Hans Jürgen Syberberg, the incarnation of the big, the dark and the holy, the high priestess of actresses, sits on a gymnastic ball dressed in a violet pleated skirt and a black, almost sinfully transparent blouse bursting at the seams. The most magical miscast of the season."


Frankfurter Rundschau, 26.03.2005

In a lovely interview, the Austrian writer Ilse Aichinger talks about life: "I find it an imposition to have been born. I find my own existence to be an imposition. I would rather not be. There is a nice book by Claudio Magris in the 'Edition Korrespondenzen' with the title 'Already have been'. Three words that summarise it all. That's what I'd like: to already have been. I don't understand authors who write to leave traces. I want to leave no traces." But there is also some comfort: "I go to the movies for up to seven hours every day. Preferably at dusk." On memory, the theme running through her most recent work, she says: "Memory is a strange thing. Most of memory is gone very quickly, but then very particular details resurface from way back when. That's nice. Günter Eich once wrote that forgetting is simply a form of remembering. Remembering is not possible without forgetting. I must first forget in order to be able to bring something back. Memory is not always there. I am dependent on memory. One has to take the chance in forgetting, one loses something for good. Total forgetting is a pre-requisite to my writing. If something surfaces by chance, good. If nothing surfaces, and that's more likely, all the better."


Tuesday 29 March, 2005

Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 29.03.2005

Author Sonja Margolina writes on the new controversies surfacing around the cultures of remembrance of World War Two in various European countries. She describes the rehabilitation of Baltic SS soldiers in the name of a national memory that has been traumatised by Stalin, as well as the gaps in the Russian narrative of history: "Although the thesis of a mirror-like similarity between the two totalitarian regimes became popular in the Soviet Union during Perestroika, the 'Great War of the Fatherland' was excepted. Today – following the defeat in the Cold War – the myth of the victory over Nazi Germany is the only enduring point of identification for the Russian nation. It offers compensation in a situation where the fruits of freedom are not to be savoured right away."

Urs Schoettli, China correspondent for the NZZ, writes a long and critical essay about the new leadership of the Chinese Communist Party under Hu Jintao: "The authorities are now taking more drastic action against everything and everyone they consider a threat to the existing order. Hu Jintao has said unequivocally that Western democracy is not for China, and that nothing would change the absolute power of the communist party and the communist nomenclatura. There is an effort to make things look more populist, but behind the scenes of leaders shaking hands with Aids patients, or maudlin encounters with the families of mining accident victims, hides an uncompromising claim to power."


Die Tageszeitung, 29.03.2005

Gabriele Goettle speaks with the director of the Montessori school in Potsdam, Ulrike Kegler, on the relationship between freedom and structure at her school. "We consider it very important to immediately abolish tendencies that are creating big problems at other schools, for instance violence. You see this just looking around: we have no students with piercings or tattoos. Our children walk upright because they feel free, we have almost no obese children because they move more. Our children look different from the children in regular schools."


Süddeutsche Zeitung, 29.03.2005

Willi Winkler honours The New Yorker magazine on its 80th birthday. Looking back to its origins, Winkler writes, "The New Yorker bought Europe to America - not too heavily, it had to be halfway acceptable to the chattering classes. The magazine always remained serious (no bad words!) but demonstrated no allegiance to church, state, family or any other basic American values cultivated by God-fearing country folk. The irresponsible, cheery 'standing above', the elegant distancing from profit and all other earthly concerns had a certain charm, even for those who did not partake in the blessing of wealth.(...) The New Yorker understands at the very least how to overcome existential problems: seeing the right films, putting the right books on display, and reserving a table suitably removed from the toilet at the right restaurant three months in advance. For those who don't understand, too bad. Thus, the New Yorker distinguished New York from the rest of the country as the global capital of the decadent 19th century."


Die Welt, 29.03.2005

Michael Pilz speaks with the singer Judith Holofernes about the "superb second album" of her band "Wir Sind Helden" (We are Heroes). "While the first album was notable for its lyrics, in the second album Holofernes devotes herself to feelings. Lines from 'Reklamation' (the first album) have become popular German turns of phrase: 'I want my life back' or 'We just have to want'. A clear, reflected discomfort with the world lurks behind such lines. Consumerism, career and social coldness are all criticised. However the music seems so happy that one takes 'Wir sind Helden' to be ironic. The singer does not agree: 'Irony means distancing yourself. And I'm very proud not to do that.'" Here's something to listen to.