The one Bayreuth rejected will work for Barenboim in Berlin
mainThe film director Wim Wenders was supposed to have staged the Wagner centennial Ring at Bayreuth in 2013. But he fell out with Katie two years earlier and nothing came of it.
Now, ‘after a long flirtation‘, Wenders has agreed to stage Bizet’s Pearl Fishers for Barenboim in Berlin next year.
He’s 70 years old and it will be his first opera.
A bit like Woody Allen in LA.
WW as opera deb!
About as superfluous as Frank Gehry’s “stage design” for Orfeo, Volker Schlöndorff’s House of the Dead, or Daniel Libeskind’s “production” of Saint Francois d’ Assise…..
I think “Wings of Desire” is the only movie of his I’ve seen, but it is also one of the most beautiful. If he doesn’t do that thing where a director decides the opera is actually about totalitarianism, or his own childhood potty-training issues, then it could be wonderful.
Is the Ring an entry level work for opera directors?
These days, qualification and experience is a liability. The saturated “have seen it all” crave new exotic or bizarre interpretations, and they bet on the outsiders to satisfy them.