euro|topics - Manuel Brug

04/12/2008

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Brug, Manuel

3 articles of this author have been cited in the European Press Review so far.

Die Welt - Germany | 26/09/2006

The fear of Islamists: no Idomeneo for Berlin

Manuel Burg reports that the Deutsche Oper in Berlin has pulled "Idomeneo" from its programme owing to fears that it might incite protests from Muslims. In Hans Neuenfels' production of the opera, the heads of Poseidon, Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad all roll. Burg comments: "Perhaps [the director of the opera house] Kirsten Harms is overreacting? Berlin is not Dinslaken. Withdrawing an opera from the programme of a renowned opera house like the Deutsche Opera is a much greater symbolic gesture than the potential risk of disruptions against which one can be prepared anyway. The theatre, which is supposed to be the moral embodiment of the West's progressive way of thinking, is doing itself no favours here."

Die Welt - Germany | 25/07/2006

The Bayreuth Festival begins

The annual Richard Wagner Festival in Bayreuth opens tomorrow. This year German playwright Tankred Dorst is directing the entire Ring Cycle, with Christian Thielemann as conductor. Manuel Brugs is not overly enthusiastic at the prospect. "Nowadays Bayreuth simply reacts; it hardly ever takes the initiative. An 80-year-old playwright who has never before directed an opera has been chosen for the task of putting this 16-hour-long colossus of an opera on stage by an 86-year-old festival director – it's like a bad joke... Only seldom is art the main objective here, as Richard Wagner once demanded it should be. So yet again what is becoming an increasingly trivial opera soap featuring the Wagner clan is taking the rap. And because the conspiracy of silence can no longer hold tight, more and more indiscretions are filtering through to the public, eagerly waiting to lap up the slightest whiff of scandal from the Bayreuth menage. Rumour has it that Wolfgang Wagner has taken to wandering round aimlessly at rehearsals and picking fights with his inexperienced directors, telling them how he thinks things should be done and stubbornly refusing to back down. Meanwhile Gudrun goes round with a face as if her dog had just died."

Die Welt - Germany | 11/01/2006

The Mozart Year

In the run-up to the 250th anniversary of the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Manuel Brug was consternated to see how the "Mozart Year" is being celebrated in Salzburg. "There it is, the real Mozart hell: 'Next to Mozart', wall to wall. 'Miracles Wax Museum' recently opened and is waiting to receive those who find waiting in the queue to see the original Mozart rooms with all the Wilson paraphernalia too boring. Salzburg's answer to Madame Tussaud's comprises 2,400 square metres of fake 'old Salzburg' consisting of compressed wood and cardboard all cobbled together, complete with 77 wax figures, some of which can talk, ranging from an archbishop to an old-style dentist. The whole thing is rounded off with a barrage of pseudo-educational waffle from the all-pervading sound system and a multimedia spectacle. You can have the Queen of the Night scream at you or undergo the Magic Flute's test of fire and water inside a rumbling, rolling tin barrel."

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