Hans Neuenfels

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Hans Neuenfels portrayed by Oliver Mark , Berlin 2006

Hans Neuenfels ( May 31, 1941 in Krefeld – February 6, 2022 in Berlin ) was a German theater and opera director , theater manager , writer , filmmaker and librettist .

Life

Hans Neuenfels studied acting and directing at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna and from 1960 to 1964 at the then Folkwang University in Essen-Werden (today the Folkwang University of the Arts ). On February 2, 1962, he took part in the stage for sensual perception - KONZIL , a cultural forum founded by Gerd Hergen Lübben as part of the "Universal Studies" of the University of Bonn , with his poems ABSPRUNG IN ANDEREN ATEM . Hans Neuenfels was Max Ernst 's assistant for more than a year and lived with him in Paris.

In 1964 Hans Neuenfels began his own productions at the Ateliertheater am Naschmarkt in Vienna . He worked at the Theater Trier , Theater Krefeld and at the Municipal Stage, the Theater Heidelberg .

In 1972 Neuenfels went to Frankfurt am Main , where he helped shape the drama under the directorship of Peter Palitzsch in the co -determination model ( Medea of Euripides , 1975 and Goethe's Iphigenia in Tauris , 1979). Among other things, he staged Roger Vitrac's Victor or The Children in Power , in Hamburg with Ulrich Wildgruber and in Vienna with Klaus Maria Brandauer , Penthesilea at the Schillertheater (Berlin) with Elisabeth Trissenaar , A Midsummer Night 's Dream also at the Schillertheater with Bernhard Minetti , Das Käthchen von Heilbronn at the Vienna Burgtheater with Anne Bennent and in 1977 Frank Wedekind 's Lulu at the Schauspielhaus in "Corso" Zurich.

In 1974 he began his career as an opera director with Verdi's The Troubadour in Nuremberg . His 1980 production of Giuseppe Verdi's Aida at the Frankfurt Opera (stage design Erich Wonder , conductor Michael Gielen ) became famous, and Neuenfels' decision to show the title heroine as a cleaning lady became almost proverbial . In Frankfurt he also directed Die Gezeichte by Franz Schreker .

In 1983, Neuenfels directed and wrote the screenplay for the imaginary Jean Genet biography Journey into a Hidden Life . However, after the premiere during the Berlin Festival on September 30, 1983, the film was not broadcast. The film producer Regina Ziegler explained this: “At the time, the film was too much of a good thing. Various ARD broadcasters accused us of unbearable filthy language and refused to broadcast it. The material, in which Genet's homosexuality plays a leading role, was ahead of its time and has not been broadcast to this day". The film was only shown online again in 2020. From 1986 to 1990, Neuenfels was artistic director of the Freie Volksbühne theater in Berlin, succeeding Kurt Hübner .

Under the directorship of Klaus Zehelein in Stuttgart, Hans Neuenfels' new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg , staged by Reinhard von der Thannen , premiered in June 1993, followed in 1998 by his first production of a Mozart opera, Die Entführung aus dem Seraglio Invited to the Wiesbaden International May Festival in 1999 and awarded the Bavarian Art Prize in the same year . A guest performance by the Staatsoper Stuttgart with this production, which SWR recorded for television, followed at the Hong Kong Arts Festival 2003.

Le prophète ( Giacomo Meyerbeer ) at the Vienna State Opera , his Nabucco interpretation at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and , in the summer of 2001 , Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss at the Salzburg Festival , produced scandals or at least caused a stir . From 1986 to 1990 he was director of the Freie Volksbühne theater in West Berlin.

He was a writer throughout his life. Numerous articles appeared in Theater heute , Die Zeit and other newspapers. In 1991 he published his first novel Isaakaros . In 2000 his first own play Frau Schlemihl und her Schatten was premiered at the Munich Residenztheater and his first libretto Giuseppe e Sylvia – a revision of his original material from 1991 – with music by Adriana Hölszky in 2001 at the Staatsoper Stuttgart under his direction. In 2003 he was awarded the Cicero Speakers' Prize for the speech he gave on the occasion of the opening of an antiquities exhibition in Berlin.

His productions in 2004 were Leoš Janáček's The Makropulos Case in Stuttgart (conductor: Sylvain Cambreling ), Fidelio in Hamburg (conductor: Ingo Metzmacher ), the world premiere of his own opera Die Schnecke (music: Moritz Eggert ) at the Nationaltheater Mannheim and Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk , Komische Oper Berlin . In 2005 he wrote and staged an “opera with piano” for the RuhrTriennale entitled Schumann , Schubert and the Snow .

In Neuenfels' production of Idomeneo , which premiered in March 2003 at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, there is a scene in the epilogue in which Idomeneo takes the severed heads of Poseidon , Christ , Mohammed and Buddha out of a sheet and places them on four chairs . After a warning from the State Criminal Police Office , the Deutsche Oper Berlin dismissed Idomeneo on September 25, 2006 for fear of Islamist-motivated hostilities against this scene. After violent public protests and the LKA giving the all-clear, the opera (in the unchanged production) was performed again from December 2006.

From 2005 Neuenfels was a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts and from 2006 a member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin.

In 2010, Neuenfels staged Richard Wagner's Lohengrin at the Bayreuth Festival and Johann Simon Mayr's Medea in Corinto at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich . In the 2016/2017 season, Neuenfels directed the tragedy Antigone by Sophocles (in an adaptation by Hans Neuenfels and Philipp Lossau ) at the Munich Residenztheater . At the 2018 Salzburg Festival he staged (directed) the opera Pique Dame by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky from 1890.

Hans Neuenfels died in February 2022 at the age of 80 in Berlin.

private

Neuenfels was married to the actress Elisabeth Trissenaar , whom he met while studying at the Max Reinhardt Seminar. The marriage resulted in their son Benedict Neuenfels , who works as a cameraman .

honors, awards

literary works

  • 1959: Ovary and Opium. A Mannerist Dictation - Cyclops from Five Poems , Eremitenpresse, Stierstadt im Taunus
  • 1963: Mouthful , Gallery of Mirrors, Cologne
  • 1991: Isaakaros , Residenz Verlag, Salzburg
  • 2001: Naples or the Journey to Stuttgart , Young and Young, Salzburg
  • 2009: How much music do people need? About Opera and Composers , Bertelsmann, Munich, ISBN 978-3-570-58005-9 (= Edition Elke Heidenreich at C. Bertelsmann ).
  • 2011: Letters to father and son , with graphics by Bernhard Jäger , Corvinus Presse
  • 2011: The Bastard Book. Autobiographical Stations . Bertelsmann, Munich, ISBN 978-3-570-58028-8 (= Edition Elke Heidenreich at C. Bertelsmann ).
  • 2012: I was the cat by Dmitri Shostakovich , in: Cat music and cat mood: animal-musical stories , edited by Elke Heidenreich and illustrated by Rudi Hurzlmeier , Bertelsmann, Munich, ISBN 978-3-570-58036-3 (= Edition Elke Heidenreich at C. Bertelsmann ).

filmography

  • 1983: Journey to a Hidden Life
  • 1983: Heinrich Penthesilea von Kleist
  • 1983: The Family or Schroffenstein
  • 1984: The Swarmers
  • 1985: The Brain on Horseback
  • 1988: Europe and the second apple. The Rabid Mouth (TV)
  • 1990: The Blind Ear of Opera
  • 1999: The Abduction from the Seraglio (TV)
  • 2001: The Bat (La chauve-souris) (TV)

web links

itemizations

  1. ↑ Theater and opera director Hans Neuenfels died , wz.de, published and accessed on February 7, 2022.
  2. ↑ Cf. From experiment to form. Third evening: 'stage for sensual perception'. In: Bonner Rundschau of February 6, 1962. It states that Neuenfels, as an author, is also "an excellent interpreter of his verses", "dresses a moving abundance of ideas from today's emotional world in a language rich in images".
  3. ↑ The conversation was led by Andreas Fasel: Why do you like Wagner, Mr. Neuenfels? In: THE WORLD . March 23, 2008 ( welt.de [accessed May 6, 2020]).
  4. ↑ "Neuenfels' beastly 'Lohengrin' inspires Bayreuth" , Manuel Brug, Die Welt , July 26, 2010.
  5. ↑ Poetry and Violence. Simon Mayr's "Medea" belongs in the repertoire - in Munich, Hans Neuenfels shows why , Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich , Frankfurter Rundschau , June 9, 2010, p. 30.
  6. ↑ Antigone ( Memento of May 15, 2019 at the Internet Archive ), program booklet, accessed February 7, 2022
  7. ↑ Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pique Dame , Archive of the Salzburg Festival, retrieved February 7, 2022
  8. ↑ Hans Neuenfels artist biography at salzburgerfestspiele.at, retrieved on February 7, 2022
  9. ↑ Balance sheet of the 2014/15 season on kultiversum.de ( Memento from September 30, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), retrieved on February 7, 2022.
  10. ↑ Theater prize for Folkwang alumnus Hans Neuenfels. Director, writer and filmmaker Hans Neuenfels was awarded the German Theater Prize "Der Faust 2016" for his life's work. , at folkwang-uni.de, retrieved on February 7, 2022

Remarks

  1. ↑ Ateliertheater am Naschmarkt in the Vienna History Wiki of the City of Vienna
personal data
SURNAME Neuenfels, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer, poet, filmmaker, librettist, theater and opera director
BIRTH DATE May 31, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Krefeld , Germany
DATE OF DEATH February 6, 2022
PLACE OF DEATH Berlin