Ruth Berghaus

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Portrait photo 1975

Ruth Berghaus (born July 2, 1927 in Dresden ; † January 25, 1996 in Zeuthen ) was a German choreographer , opera and theater director .

Life

Ruth Berghaus (center) in 1981 at the Berlin Encounter to Promote Peace
Berlin memorial plaque on the house, Breite Strasse 7, in Berlin-Pankow
Grave of Ruth Berghaus and Paul Dessau in the Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof in Berlin.

Berghaus studied expressive dance and dance directing with Gret Palucca in Dresden and was a master student of Wolfgang Langhoff at the German Academy of Arts in Berlin. Langhoff's theatrical aesthetics were not formative for her; she profited greatly from the encounter with Bertolt Brecht and his theater work. From 1951 to 1964 she worked as a choreographer a . a. at the Deutsches Theater , at the German State Opera , at the Berliner Ensemble and also in the “Distel” . Her interest in directing awoke with the condemnation of Lukullus by Paul Dessau at the Berlin State Opera in 1951, director Wolf Völker. 14 years later she directed this opera herself. But she became famous with the choreography of the battle scenes in the Coriolan in Brecht's arrangement at the Berliner Ensemble in 1964.

In 1954 Berghaus married the composer Paul Dessau , whose works she staged for music theater. In 1970 she became Helene Weigel's deputy in the management of the Berliner Ensemble, of which she was director until 1977. During this time, Berghaus succeeded in pulling the BE out of its ideological and aesthetic paralysis and binding young, unconventional forces to the house, including Heiner Müller and Einar Schleef . After the concerted dismissal of Ruth Berghaus by the Brecht heirs, the Central Committee of the SED and individual employees of the Berliner Ensemble, the ensemble sank into the museum design of Brecht's work.

Career

Ruth Berghaus started at the State Opera Unter den Linden in Berlin in 1951. There she staged a number of plays. Two of her productions are still played there today, The Barber of Seville by Gioachino Rossini from 1968 (performed more than 360 times) and Pelléas et Mélisande by Claude Debussy from 1991 (only performed around 30 times).

From 1980 to 1987 Berghaus worked at the Frankfurt Opera . It was there that her most important performances took place: in 1980 The Magic Flute by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , in 1981 the Abduction from the Seraglio designed by her - including the set , 1982 The Trojans by Hector Berlioz (set design by Hans Dieter Schaal ), The Makropulos Case by Leoš Janáček and finally Richard Wagner's Parsifal and 1985–1987 Der Ring des Nibelungen . In 1992 she returned to the Frankfurt Opera and staged the Rosenkavalier .

In 1980 she also staged Richard Strauss's opera Elektra at the Mannheim National Theater . This production is still played today. 1985 in Prague the Wozzeck from Alban Berg and in Dresden the Cornet Christoph Rilke from Siegfried Matthus . In 1986 she made her debut at the Vienna State Opera with the choreography by Hans Werner Henzes Orpheus (stage design Schaal, conductor Ulf Schirmer ). In 1988 Berghaus staged Alban Berg's Lulu in Brussels and in the same year for the Wiener Festwochen in the Theater an der Wien Fierrabras by Franz Schubert (stage design Schaal, costumes Marie-Luise Strandt, conductor Claudio Abbado ) and in Hamburg at the Tristan State Opera and Isolde by Richard Wagner (Schaal set design, Strandt costumes). This production is still played to this day. At the Zurich Opera productions originated the Freischütz by Carl Maria von Weber (Conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt , this production is also available on DVD and BluRay) and the Flying Dutchman . Berghaus' last work was the acquittal of Medea by Rolf Liebermann , a world premiere at the Hamburg State Opera in 1994. The last performance conceived by Berghaus was 1995 Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss (son) in Leipzig, which a team of assistants realized in its reading.

Berghaus also worked as a director at the Burgtheater in Vienna , where she staged Penthesilea von Kleist in 1991 and Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle in 1993 (both with Erich Wonder as a set designer).

Ruth Berghaus was one of the few directors who tried to pass on her craft to young colleagues. For three consecutive years, she organized a “master class for opera directing” in which young professionals pre-staged scenes from selected works.

Berghaus died in 1996 of complications from cancer. Her grave is in the Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof in Berlin-Mitte.

Berghaus' work is documented in the archive of the Academy of Arts and is accessible there to those interested.

On September 21, 2017 , a Berlin memorial plaque was unveiled at her former home, Berlin-Pankow , Breite Strasse 7 .

theatre

Awards

literature

  • Sigrid Neef : The theater of Ruth Berghaus , Berlin 1989.
  • Dieter Kranz : Berlin theater. 100 performances from three decades , Berlin 1990 - including conversations with Berghaus
  • Klaus Bertisch: Ruth Berghaus , Berlin 1990.
  • Christoph Kammertöns : Ruth Berghaus , in: Lexikon der Oper , Vol. 1, ed. by Elisabeth Schmierer, Laaber: Laaber 2002, pp. 193–194
  • Corinne Holtz: Ruth Berghaus. A portrait of the Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg 2005. ISBN 3-434-50547-4 (here also an evaluation of the reports about Berghaus to the Stasi that were prepared by the longstanding dramaturge Neef, among others )
  • Irene Bazinger (Ed.): Director: Ruth Berghaus. Stories from production , Rotbuch Verlag, Berlin 2010. ISBN 978-3-86789-117-2
  • Short biography for:  Berghaus, Ruth . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  • Nina Noeske and Matthias Tischer (eds.): Ruth Berghaus and Paul Dessau: Composing - Choreographing - Staging , Cologne, Weimar, Vienna 2018, ISBN 978-3-412-50069-6 .

Web links

Commons : Ruth Berghaus  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

See also

Alexander Berghaus is a nephew of Ruth Berghaus.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cabaret "Die Distel" . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 3, 2001, ISSN  0944-5560 , p. 136–138 ( luise-berlin.de - here p. 138: Ruth Berghaus as “dance sculptor”).
  2. ↑ Viola Roggenkamp: The ruler. Ruth Berghaus was loved, spied on, hated. A biography of the director searches for the truth . Review in Die Zeit , June 2, 2005, accessed July 2, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Berghaus, Ruth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German director of music theater
DATE OF BIRTH July 2, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH January 25, 1996
Place of death Zeuthen near Berlin