AUTUMN CYCLE – OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2018
WAGNER IN SCENE
A series of three sessions dedicated to the story of the staging of Richard Wagner’s work, by Paulo Ferreira de Castro (NOVA FCSH).
All sessions will be abundantly illustrated with audiovisual examples, and are intended for the general public.

Exorcisms: from the “new Bayreuth” to the Regietheater

After the fall of the Nazi regime, and under the impetus of Wieland Wagner, the Bayreuth Festival undertook a radical renewal of its aesthetics, tending to a greater visual abstraction and the incorporation of interpretive proposals in rupture with tradition, which is not strange Stunde Null’s inherent desire for depoliticization in Germany (“zero hour”) and the identity crisis that followed the outcome of World War II.

At the same time, from the 1960s onwards, the joint influence of scenic realism and Brechtian dramaturgy will decisively mark the ways of thinking about opera staging in the context of the German Democratic Republic, with the emergence of emblematic figures such as Walter Felsenstein, Joachim Herz, Ruth Berghaus, Götz Friedrich and Harry Kupfer, whose action will have global repercussions. The second session dedicated to the theme will try to put in perspective the prevailing currents in the Wagnerian staging in the 50-70s, without forgetting the production of the Festival’s centenary signed by Patrice Chéreau.

Free entry. Goethe-Institut, Lisbon