PRESSE
18. Juli 2011 / Kulturportal Brandenburg
Elblandfestspiele Wittenberge
Vor der traumhaften historischen Kulisse der Alten Ölmühle in Wittenberge direkt am Ufer der Elbe kommen alljährlich Mitte Juli Gäste von Nah und Fern zu einem besonderen Open-Air-Event zusammen.
Blumen war das Thema der zwölften Elblandfestspiele auf dem Gelände der Alten Ölmühle in Wittenberge. Beide Veranstaltungen, am Freitag und am Sonnabend, waren ausverkauft. So haben rund 4.000 Gäste die Operettengala an der Elbe genossen.
Es erklang ein bunter Strauß von Melodien aus Operette, Film und Musical, vorgetragen von Künstlern aus aller Herren Länder. Eva Lind aus Österreich, Stefanie Schaefer aus Deutschland, Sirje Aleksandra Viise aus Estland, Erkan Aki aus der Schweiz, Radoslaw Rydlewski aus Polen, Milko Milev aus Deutschland brachten Melodien aus bekannten Operetten und Musicals zu Gehör.
Der glanzvolle Abend wurde durch ein opulentes Höhenfeuerwerk abgerundet.
PRESSE
17. Juli 2011 / Der Prignitzer, von Lars Reinhold
Blütenpracht in lauer Sommernacht
Unter dem Motto „petite fleur“ erlebten 4000 Besucher zweieinhalb Stunden Musik und Tanz der Extraklasse
Brillante Arien aus Fledermaus und Co., lateinamerikanisches Feuer, humorvoller Satzgesang um kleine, grüne und stachelige Pflanzen sowie Gänsehautmelodien aus dem Saxofon: Die Elblandfestspiele 2011 werden mit ihrer Mischung aus klassischen Melodien und modernen Genres den Besuchern mit Sicherheit lange in Erinnerung bleiben.
Mussten die Gäste am Freitagabend noch frieren, hatte das Wetter am Samstag ein Einsehen und überschüttete bereits die traditionelle nachmittägliche Kaffeetafel mit Sonnenschein. Hier plauderten die Stars ohne die ihnen so oft nachgesagten Allüren aus dem Nähkästchen, während sich zahlreiche Besucher die Festspieltorte schmecken ließen. Mit der spontanen Jamsession, in die auch Michael Hansen, Präsident des Festspielvereins, mit Gitarre und Panflöte einstieg, hatte der Nachmittag seinen kulturellen Höhepunkt gefunden.
Als um 20.15 Uhr schließlich die ersten Töne von Tschaikowskis “Blumenwalzer” ertönen, die Damen und Herren des MDR-Fernsehballetts in fantasievollen Kostümen die Bühne erobern, wird einmal mehr klar, dass Wittenberge während der Elblandfestspiele in der Liga der ganz großen Kulturstätten mitspielt. Kaum dass Erkan Aki, Radoslav Rydlewski und Christian Grygas besingen, “Wie die Blumen im Lenze blühn”, blühen auch “Tausend Rote Rosen” im Spopran von Eva Lind, Stefanie Schaefer und der Lotte-Lehmann-Preisträgerin Sirje Viise, die ihre Glanzleistung später am Abend mit den “Klängen der Heimat” aus der “Fledermaus” abliefert. Einen Arien-Klassiker gibt auch Geert Chatrou, dreifacher Weltmeister im Kunstpfeifen, mit seiner spitzmündigen Interpretation der “Königin der Nacht” aus Mozarts “Zauberflöte”, zum Besten. Für Auflockerung zwischendurch sorgen die Comedian Harmonists today, die sich natürlich ihrem kleinen grünen Kaktus widmen.
Nach der Pause wird es poppig, denn Tina Tandler mischt mit ihrem Saxofon das Ballett auf, intoniert erst sanft das Thema des Abends, “petit fleur”, legt dann aber mit “Peter Gunn” aus dem Film Blues Brothers ordentlich nach. Es folgen Yma America und Eduardo Villegas, die mit dem “Girl from Ipanema” lateinamerikanisches Feuer ins Publikum spielen.
Mit dem großen Showfinale, in dem es natürlich heißt “Vielen Dank für die Blumen” bedanken sich die Stars noch einmal beim begeisterten Wittenberger Publikum, bevor Moderatorin Madeleine Wehle – inzwischen vom frivolen Blumenmädchen zur eleganten Dame avanciert – zur Huldigung der “Wittenberger Luft” aufruft und das Feuerwerk donnernd bunte Sterne in den Himmel über der Ölmühle zaubert. “Seit einigen Jahren sind die Mottos der Festspiele Programm”, resümiert Vereinspräsident Michael Hansen. ” Und für ,petite fleur’ traf das ganz besonders zu.”
PRESSE
25. Februar 2011 / Märkische Allgemeine – Kultur, von Andreas König
Sirje Viise gewann die „goldene Elfe“
Überzeugte die Jury…
WITTENBERGE – Ihre Stimme fährt den Zuhörern direkt in die Magengrube. Sirje Alexandra Viise, estnische Sopranistin, gewann gestern das Vorsingen der Gesellschaft Elblandfestspiele im Wittenberger Kulturhaus. …
Erstmals wurde der Nachwuchs-Gesangswettbewerb der Elblandfestspiele gemeinsam mit den Organisatoren der Lotte-Lehmann-Akademie in Perleberg abgehalten. …. Am Ende gewann Sirje Viise mit ihrem dramatischen Sopran und ihrer raumgreifenden Präsenz die Ohren und Herzen der Juroren. Sie darf bei den diesjährigen Elblandfestspielen mitwirken und bekommt so die Chance, einem größerem Publikum bekannt zu werden.
Als Symbol des Erfolges erhielt die Sirje Viise aus der Hand von Michael Hansen die „Goldene Elfe“. Eine Skulptur, die erstmals zu den Elblandfestspielen 2007 Johannes Heesters überreicht wurde.
PRESS
29. October 2010 / Daily Express – Stage, by Neil Norman
Iphigenie auf Tauris, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Sadler’s Wells
As the German language is all Greek to me the words of Gluck’s opera remain linguistically impenetrable. But the music is sublimely dramatic and Pina Bausch’s groundbreaking response to it is a monumental achievement.
Made in 1974 it reaches through Goethe’s verse play right back to Euripides’ original drama, a complex tale of sibling sacrifice and spiteful gods that is closer to melodrama than tragedy.
Against a simple but powerfully effective set of rusting steel panels, white sheets, a table, chairs and a bath of dreadful portent, Bausch relays the essence of Greek drama through every gesture, as Iphigenie (Ruth Amarante) bends and twists as she implores the gods for mercy while the chorus of priestesses slide around her as one entity. The slaying of her father Agamemnon is played in a bath with a blood-red scarf irresistibly recalling Marat’s death at the hands of Charlotte Corday.
The arrival of Iphigenie’s captive brother Orest (Pablo Aran Gimeno) and his friend Pylades (Damiano Ottavio Bigi) is appropriately dramatic – laid out on the table like stricken warriors awaiting postmortem dissection. But as they revive and move into a pas de deux of controlled gladiatorial energy it becomes increasingly apparent on which side they butter their toast.
As a dance-opera this could not be better proportioned
There are times during their pas de deux – especially in act III – when their pale sculpted bodies and mutual strength and yielding tenderness is like watching an all-male pieta by Michelangelo come thrillingly to life.
As a dance-opera this could not be better proportioned. Every gesture responds to the nuance of the music, from the choral work of the ensemble to the vibrant solos and an extraordinary last act that combines the funereal, the ritualistic with the enlightenment of cathartic release.
Musical director Jan Michael Hortsmann coordinates the specially assembled orchestra and the London Voices choir with a seamless, spinetingling dexterity that fills the wide canvas of the late Rolf Borzik’s set. Above all Bausch is true to the spirit of Greek classicism while fashioning a language of dramatic movement that was entirely her own.
PRESS
28. October 2010 / The Telegraph – Culture, by Sahra Crompton
Iphigenie auf Tauris, Tanztheater Wuppertal, Sadler’s Wells, review
The agony behind the story engages Bausch to created pure dance. Rating: * * * *
Ruth Amarante as Iphigenie in Iphigenie auf Tauris (Photo: Ulli Weiss)
This dance-opera was the second work Pina Bausch made for her new company, way back in 1973, and to see it now is a fascinating demonstration both of where she had come from — and where she was heading.
She takes an opera by Gluck, which retells the Greek legend of Iphigenie, daughter of Agamemnon, who nearly sacrifices her lost brother Orestes without knowing who he is, and places among the measured Baroque tones an expressionistic depiction of the emotions and characters involved.
Whereas later, as she developed her ideas of dance theatre, Bausch used speech and minimal steps in her creations, this is pure dance. Instead of speaking themselves, the performers seem to channel the singers who surround them (perhaps slightly too far away in this staging at Sadler’s Wells).
But it isn’t the strict narrative that engages Bausch; it is the agony behind the story (sung in German), suggested rather than expressed by the music.
Through stark, sculptural images the work builds its power. So, when we first meet Ruth Amarante’s Iphigenie, she is already haunted by a graphic vision of her father’s death at the hands of her mother – a body raised from a bath, a red scarf draped around his neck. Her despair and loneliness are revealed by melting movements, her arm raised repeatedly to the heavens which do not hear her.
Her acolytes move in simple groupings that conjure Greek friezes. At one moment, they recall the grave bayadères of Petipa in a long line of bending arabesques; at others they fold their heads on to their hands in pyramid-shapes, like the girls in Nijinska’s Les Noces.
Bausch, pupil of choreographers Limón, Tudor and Jooss, is tipping her hat to dance history.
When Orestes (Pablo Aran Gimeno) appears with his friend Pylades (Damiano Ottavio Bigi), their dependence is shown by duets of entwined tenderness; Orestes cradled like a fallen Christ unfolds his limbs in slow motion or collapses in solemn melancholy. Their movement is deliberate, stylised, mythical.
Each of the opera’s four acts, designed by Bausch with Jürgen Dreier and Rolf Borzik, has its own character. In the final sequence, against a white cyclorama, Amarante, now in black, subsides into stillness and silence as she waits for what is to come. A dancer strews white flowers. Orestes brings on the ladder that will take him to the altar.
The intensity created is broken by the sudden, overwhelming moment of recognition — a moment all the stronger for the way it leads not to a duet, but to a clinging embrace. The orchestra and soloists, conducted by Jan Michael Horstmann, go on to sing of triumph, but it is that frozen tableau of tentative survival that lingers in the air.
Before Bausch died in 2009, she had decided that Iphigenie auf Tauris should finally come to London (before it had only been seen at the Edinburgh Festival).
You can understand why she wanted this pivotal work to be more widely seen: it is a huge undertaking to stage, but its value lies not only in its own fierce beauty and rich allusiveness but also in the insight it gives into the development of a woman whose vision transformed dance.
PRESS
27. October 2010 / bachtrack.com, by Julie Taylor
Iphigenie auf Tauris, Tanztheater Wuppertal
This performance of Iphigenie auf Tauris is the first time Pina Bausch’s company, Tanztheater Wuppertal, has appeared at Sadler’s Wells since her death in 2009 and in the world of modern dance it is the hottest ticket in town.
Based on Christoph Willibald Gluck’s opera of the Greek myth Iphigenie auf Tauris was one of the first works she created for her company in the early seventies. It is a dance-opera where the two disciplines are mixed to create maximum aural and visual impact with the leading characters represented by a dancer on stage and a singer performing the libretto off-stage. In this case the soloists and chorus were positioned to the side of the proscenium arch at Sadler’s Wells, creating a semi-circle of drama in which the audience was immersed.
Under the musical direction of Jan Michael Horstmann, the orchestra successfully captured the emotional intensity of the music without overwhelming the beauty and clarity of the soloists or dancers. Indeed all the singers delivered the German libretto with drama and feeling, complemented by London Voices representing the Greek chorus.
On stage Ruth Amarante danced the role of Iphigenia with a blend of delicacy and strength as her slight frame displayed both vulnerability and inner power as she repeatedly threw herself upwards to the gods when pleading for their mercy, while her fellow priestesses moved gracefully into a series of images like the friezes on a Greek urn, echoing the style and unity of a traditional corps de ballet. The affection and deep friendship of Orest and Pylades, danced by Pablo Aran Gimeno and Damiano Ottavio Bigi, is symbolised by their first appearance together on stage where they are physically entwined, showing their need for each other. While the mutual dependency of the siblings is clear when Iphigenie and Orest literally cling to each other for comfort when they discover the true identity of the other.
The choreography of this production is now 36 years old and it is testament to the influence of Bausch’s work that some of the moves seem almost familiar. Yet there are many striking moments. Orest ascending a sloping ladder towards the altar of his sacrificial death literally conveys a sense of the delicate balance between life and death in a movement which despite the ease of its delivery must be agonisingly difficult to achieve.
Given Bausch’s deserved status as high priestess of the modern dance movement it seems almost heretical to be negative but despite the performance quality this was at times a difficult and bleak evening. The tale of Iphigenia is one largely filled with pain and it is perhaps a mark of the production’s success that this is conveyed so powerfully it occasionally felt gruelling. Undoubtedly it is a privilege to see this rarely performed work and for Bausch acolytes or those keen to understand the development of her oeuvre and its impact on dance and theatre it’s a must see; just don’t expect an easy ride.