Herbert Wernicke

Herbert Wernicke (* 24. March 1946 in Auggen , Baden-Wurttemberg ; † 16th April 2002 in Basel ) was opera director , stage and costume designer .

Life

Herbert Wernicke, son of the painting restorer of the same name at the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Braunschweig, studied piano, flute and conducting at the Braunschweig Conservatory from 1965 to 1966 . 1967–1971 he trained as a set designer at the Munich Art Academy. After starting out as a set and costume designer in Landshut (1971) and Wuppertal (1972–1974) as well as first stage productions in Darmstadt, in 1978 Handel's Belshazzar was his first opera director in Darmstadt . From the late 1980s, the focus of his artistic work was at the Theater der Stadt Basel , where he had lived since 1990. In addition, he created productions for major opera houses in Europe and America as well as for the Salzburg Festival .

On April 16, 2002 Herbert Wernicke died unexpectedly after a short, serious illness in the Cantonal Hospital of Basel. Israel in Egypt premiered on May 5, 2002 at the Theater Basel . The production was shown in the fragmentary form in which Herbert Wernicke left it on the day before his death. He was buried in his birthplace Auggen.

His estate is in the Berlin Academy of the Arts . From January 29 to March 26, 2006, it showed an exhibition on Herbert Wernicke's work entitled Harmony instead of Utopia - Herbert Wernicke, director and set designer . The illustrated book was published for the exhibition: Harmony Remains Utopia. Herbert Wernicke - director and designer ·

Herbert Wernicke was married to the actress and singer Desirée Meiser for the second time .

Important productions

• Judas Maccabaeus ( Bavarian State Opera )
• The Flying Dutchman (Bavarian State Opera)
• Hippolyte et Aricie ( Deutsche Oper Berlin )
• Oberon (German Opera Berlin)
• Jephta (Bremen)
• Montezuma (Deutsche Oper Berlin)
• Messiah (Deutsche Oper Berlin)
• Così fan tutte ( Theater Basel )
• Salome (Theater Basel)
• In the white Rößl (Theater Basel)
• Die Fledermaus (Theater Basel)
• Le Cinesi / Echo and Narcisse ( Schlosstheater Schwetzingen ; Musical director: René Jacobs )
• Moses und Aron ( Frankfurt Opera ; musical direction: Gary Bertini )
• From a house of the dead (Darmstadt)
• The chalk circle ( Alexander von Zemlinsky ; Hamburg)
• Lulu (1983, Staatstheater Hannover ; musical direction: George Alexander Albrecht )
• Il barbiere di Siviglia (1983, Darmstadt)
• Baroque trilogy ( Phaéton / O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort (based on cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach ) / Orfeo ed Euridice ) (1985–1989, Staatstheater Kassel )
• Hoffmann's Tales (1985, Oper Frankfurt)
• Wiener Blut (1986, Theater des Westens in Berlin)
• Duke Bluebeard's Castle the opera in one act by Béla Bartók in Wernicke's production in two different versions of the same opera in two different versions by Bartok (1988, De Nederlandse Opera Amsterdam; production took over: 1994, opera Frankfurt; Musical director: Sylvain Cambreling )
• Der Ring des Nibelungen (1991, Théâtre de la Monnaie Brussels; Revival: 1994, Oper Frankfurt; Musical director: Sylvain Cambreling)
• La Calisto (1993, Théâtre de la Monnaie Brussels; Musical director: René Jacobs)
• Orfeo (1993, Salzburg Festival )
• Boris Godunow (1994, Salzburg Festival, in collaboration with the Easter Festival, musical direction: Claudio Abbado )
• Der Rosenkavalier (1995, Salzburg Festival, conductor: Lorin Maazel )
• Fidelio (1996, Salzburg Festival, conductor: Sir Georg Solti )
• Pelléas et Mélisande (1996, Théâtre de la Monnaie Brussels)
• From Germany ( Mauricio Kagel , 1997, co-production of Theater Basel with the Holland Festival and the Wiener Festwochen )
• Abduction in the concert hall ( Mauricio Kagel , Teatro La Fenice in Venice, world premiere)
• Don Carlo (1998, Salzburg Festival)
• I vespri siciliani (1998, Vienna State Opera )
• Giulio Cesare (1998, ( Theater Basel ), Liceu Barcelona)
• Palestrina (1999, Vienna State Opera)
• How is the city so desert that was full of people (by Heinrich Schütz and Matthias Weckmann. 1999, Theater Basel )
• Les Troyens (2000, Salzburg Festival)
• Actus tragicus with cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach (December 2000, Theater Basel , Bavarian Theater Prize 2001)
• The Woman Without a Shadow (December 2001, Metropolitan Opera New York)
• Giulio Cesare (2002, State Theater Hanover )
• Das Rheingold (2002, Bavarian State Opera Munich)
• Israel in Egypt (Fragment, 2002, Theater Basel) Wernicke died in the rehearsal phase, only the first act was staged
• Die Walküre (draft, 2002, Bavarian State Opera) Wernicke died 4 weeks before rehearsals began.

Herbert Wernicke's productions on DVD

• Francesco Cavalli: La Calisto , recording from the Theater Royal de La Monnaie de Bruxelles, HMF 1996.
• Hector Berlioz: Les Troyens , live recording from the Salzburg Festival 2000 (Bel Air Media / ARTE France / France 3), Arthaus 2002 (licensed edition also as two thousand and one edition)
• Richard Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier , recording of the resumption of the production of the Salzburg Festival in the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Decca / Universal 2009
• Georg Friedrich Händel: Giulio Cesare , live recording from the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona in July 2004, TDK 2005

Awards

• 2001 Bavarian Theater Prize

literature

• Harmony remains utopia, exhibition catalog Berlin, 2006
• Herbert Wernicke. Director, set designer, costume designer , ed. by Christian Fluri in collaboration with Iris Becher and Marianne Wackernagel, Basel: Schwabe 2011
• Thomas Blubacher , Paul Schorno : Herbert Wernicke . In: Andreas Kotte (Ed.): Theater Lexikon der Schweiz . Volume 3, Chronos, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-0340-0715-9 , pp. 2083 f.
• Stefan Hess : Wernicke, Herbert. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Stefan Hess: Wernicke, Herbert. In: Baden-Württemberg biographies. Vol. 6, ed. by Fred Ludwig Sepaintner , Stuttgart 2016, pp. 506–509.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Cradle and grave in Auggen In: Badische Zeitung of March 24, 2016, accessed on July 10, 2017.

Web links

• Herbert Wernicke Archive in the Archive of the Academy of Arts, Berlin