Rudolf Noelte

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rudolf Noelte (left) 1960 together with Uwe Johnson and Erich Schellow
Grave site, Stubenrauchstrasse 43–45, in Berlin-Friedenau

Rudolf Noelte (born March 20, 1921 in Berlin ; † November 8, 2002 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen ) was a German television , theater and opera director .

Life

Noelte studied theater studies , German literature , philosophy and art history before he came to the theater. With this extensive knowledge, he began as assistant director at the Hebbel Theater in Berlin after the Second World War , where he staged for the first time independently in 1948: Wolfgang Borchert's war returnees drama Outside in front of the door . Ten years later (1957) he also directed the NDR film of the same name with Paul Edwin Roth (Beckmann), Malte Jaeger and Eva Kotthaus in the leading roles. He also used the next few years to learn from great directors such as Jürgen Fehling or Walter Felsenstein , without, however, imitating these role models.

Rudolf Noelte was never director of a theater for any length of time. In 1959 he took over the management of the Free Volksbühne in Berlin , but was dismissed six months later. A labor court process and an investigative committee set up under the chairmanship of the later Senator for Culture Werner Stein followed - whereby the employer Noeltes, the association Freie Volksbühne and its chairman Siegfried Nestriepke , were certified as having acted inappropriately and unlawfully. Noelte was a loner and concentrated on the meticulous preparation of his productions. Samples were prepared by him almost mathematically down to the smallest detail; it was about a theater that served literature. Even if he created his own text versions of the pieces he staged, he always remained committed to the author and his intention. He rejected theatrical spectacles. His preferred authors were those who focused on the psychological condition and psychological motivation of the characters he set out to work out. For example with Carl Sternheim : Noelte's staging of the cassette with Theo Lingen in the leading role is still considered a model staging of the play. The productions of the plays by Henrik Ibsen , August Strindberg and Eugene O'Neill were also exemplary for his point of view. With his staging of plays by Anton P. Chekhov , Noelte opened up a new perspective on the author from the 1960s onwards, heralding a renaissance of his plays on West German stages. He also contributed to a broader Chekhov reception.

The accuracy of his point of view in relation to the plays corresponded to his meticulous staging work, which did not tolerate any negligence and gave actors only little interpretative freedom, so that as a director he was as respected as feared. Nevertheless, a tribe of actors formed with whom he worked again and again. Artists like Marianne Hoppe , Therese Giehse and Cordula Trantow often worked with him. In Will Quadflieg he found the ideal counterpart for his conceptual ideas as a performer.

Noelte has also worked repeatedly and successfully as an opera director. So he staged a. a. 1973 at the Deutsche Oper Berlin Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (conductor Lorin Maazel ), 1978 at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich Yevgeny Onegin by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and in 1991 - as his last directorial work ever - Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro at the festival in Aix- en-Provence . His last major success was in 1991 with his staging of Molière's The Miser in Zurich . In 1999 he received the Bavarian Theater Prize .

In the 1990s, Noelte contracted Alzheimer's disease and spent the last years of his life impoverished in a nursing home, where he died in 2002 of pneumonia . He is buried in the Schöneberg III cemetery in Berlin-Friedenau , a few meters from Marlene Dietrich and Helmut Newton .

He was married to the actress Cordula Trantow .

Quotes

"You can tell the condition of a family by their table manners."

- Rudolf Noelte

“His theme is people in their woes. The lonely, the desperate. The beaten. Always looking for truthfulness on stage. Excessive, relentless in his demands on himself and his employees. "

- Inge Keller , actress

"The quietest appears to be the loudest in the end."

- Eric Bentley , theater critic

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Noelte, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German television, theater and opera director
DATE OF BIRTH March 20, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH November 8, 2002
Place of death Garmisch-Partenkirchen