Erich Walter (dancer)

Erich Walter (1971)

Erich Walter, Růžena Mazalová

Erich Walter (born December 30, 1927 in Fürth ; † November 23, 1983 in Herdecke ) was a German dancer , choreographer and ballet director.

Life

Erich Walter received his dance training in Nuremberg from Olympiada Alperova. His desire to become a dancer was inspired by the Czech dancer Miroslav Kura (born 1924), who was engaged in Nuremberg in the mid-1940s. In 1945 Walter was accepted as a ballet trainee in Nuremberg.

In the 1950/51 season he was a solo dancer in the ballet ensemble at the Deutsches Theater in Göttingen led by Hans von Kusserow . The director was Heinz Hilpert , his senior director Helmut Henrichs . Famous soloists such as Edel von Rothe (later prima ballerina in Düsseldorf and Duisburg, and then Walter's assistant from 1964), Gisela Deege and Marcel Luipart were engaged with Erich Walter . The ensemble fell apart when the prominent soloists joined Helge Pawlinin's “Abraxas” touring troupe, which only survived for a short time.

In the 1952/1953 season, Walter was a member of the Hessian State Theater in Wiesbaden . There the director Heinrich Koehler-Helffrich had engaged the dancer Peter van Dyk . He was supported by Hans Werner Henze as artistic advisor and ballet conductor . The choreographer and boss was Edgar von Pelchrzim . He had premiered Henze's ballet “Jaques Pudding” here in 1949, which may have inspired Walter to create his own ballet choreography later in Wuppertal. Pelchrzin's lyrical and clear style, for which he was praised, also had a trend-setting significance for Walter.

Wiesbaden ended his dance ambitions for financial reasons, and Walter accepted an engagement in Wuppertal , where Helmut Henrichs, whom he knew from Göttingen , was now director of opera and drama. It can be assumed that Henrichs became aware of Erich Walter's talent at an early stage, supported by Heinrich Wendel, the set designer who, after Göttingen and Wiesbaden, was now also engaged with Walter in Wuppertal. In 1953 Walter accepted a double contract as a dancer and ballet master. On October 31st, he staged his first ballet: “The Fairy's Kiss” by Igor Stravinsky . The fairy was danced by Denise Laumer, the girl by Helga Held, and the male lead by himself. He then created 42 ballets for Wuppertal. He completely renounced the usual ballet repertoire. Igor Stravinsky, Hans Werner Henze, Claude Debussy , Luigi Dallapiccola , Béla Bartók , Arnold Schönberg , but also Antonio Vivaldi and Giovanni Battista Pergolesi as well as Claudio Monteverdi were his composers. The Monteverdi renaissance started from Wuppertal on the border to the 1960s.

Walter created L'Orfeo as a full-length ballet, as well as other Monteverdi evenings, with his "duel" being praised as a special masterpiece. Until 1956, the Wuppertal stages played in the alternative location in the town hall. From 1956 then in the reopened opera house in Barmen . Walter choreographed around 30 operas and operettas during this time. He was a sought-after partner of the directors, and the ballet ensemble, which has now become famous, wanted to see as much as possible. The first television films were made, and Helmut Käutner brought in the Wuppertal Ballet for his Hamlet film The Rest is Silence . In 1957 a guest performance in Paris (“Jaques Pudding”, Bartók's Concerto for String Instruments, and “Pelleas and Melisande” by Schönberg) confirmed the status that it had achieved as one of the best ensembles in Germany. In 1958 Grischa Barfuss became the director of the Wuppertaler Bühnen. He now had a team with Erich Walter, Heinrich Wendel , the director Georg Reinhardt and the dramaturge Rolf Trouwborst , who had achieved musical theater at the highest level for almost three decades. Until 1964 in Wuppertal, and from 1964 then at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein Düsseldorf Duisburg .

There, Erich Walter, as ballet director, determinedly and extremely successfully formed a high-level classical ballet company. With a much larger ensemble, Walter then took over some ballets from Wuppertal, which he mostly re-imagined and revised. High-ranking dancers flocked to him. Many talented young dancers became famous with him: Peter Breuer , who came to him at the age of 18 and whose development was close to his heart until his death, Renate Deppisch , Colleen Scott , André Doutreval and full- blown professionals such as Hugo Delavalle , Inge Koch and Marina of Othegraven . Stars of the time like Tilly Söffing and Paolo Bortoluzzi fit harmoniously into the large repertoire. Joan Cadzow was hired as the first prima ballerina for the following ballet classics. Walter's dream ballerina then became Monique Janotta from France , who, at the same time as Falco Kapuste from Berlin, was one of the Rhenish ballet stars. The repertoire that Erich Walter created over the next twenty years became legendary. In the 1970s, “oe” Horst Koegler found that the Rhine Opera had the largest, most interesting and most musically demanding repertoire in all of Germany.

Even the opera and operetta did not want to do without Walter's collaboration. His staging of the golden calf in Schönberg's Moses und Aron was internationally acclaimed. Countless guest performances have taken ballet and opera all over the world. In 1969 Walter brought the Czech-Russian ballet master and choreographer Růžena Mazalová (* 1927; † 2019 in Prague) to his side to create the traditional "white nudes" for Swan Lake . This resulted in a fruitful artistic partnership that brought Růžena Mazalová to the position of deputy ballet director. Erich Walter created fifty-two ballets between 1964 and 1983, the year of his death. Of these, eleven were full-length ballets, such as Cinderella 1967, "L'Orfeo" 1967, "Swan Lake" 1969, followed by Giselle , Romeo and Juliet , Sleeping Beauty and many others. Again and again he returned to his roots. His last program was a Stravinsky evening. Staged by himself with George Balanchine's Apollo , as well as “Orpheus” and Petruschka .

Erich Walter died of leukemia on November 23, 1983 .

literature

• Reclams Ballet Guide, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-15-008042-8

Web links

• Literature by and about Erich Walter in the catalog of the German National Library