Così fan tutte ossia La scuola degli amanti

In a few days Szene12, a young music-theather experiment, brings on the stage of the Hochschule für bildende Künste (Günzstraße 34) Mozart's opera buffa "Così fan tutte".

© Szene12

A young team of professionals will guide the public into a modern-setting of an opera which premiere is dated back in 1790. The stage looks like a modern sitcom, and cameras are capturing moments of life on stage, and behind it. All is displayed for audience visibility at a large screen which will hold other surprises on the performance days. A new way to discover Mozart suited to everybody (opera lovers and non). An experience to share with the whole family. A chance to see how "Così fan tutte"'s life is seen through today's eyes.

The expectations of those who are used to a traditional performance could perhaps remain unfullfilled, or opened for new levels of art enjoyment.

© Szene12

Actually, in young director Toni Burghard Friedrich's "Così fan tutte" there is not only Mozart, but a lot more. As per Mr. Burghard Friedrich, "In my 'Così fan tutte', the American sitcom meets the European Opera". From this meeting come out funny scenes, hilarious moments and a new interpretation of an opera not yet seen here in Dresden.

In the true Mozart spirit, "Così fan tutte" by Szene12 shows in our today's world that time passes by but the human nature does not change. 

Bring your mobile phone, get on Twitter, adjust your camera, and do not lose the chance to play with!

Così fan tutte con be follwed on Twitter  and on Facebook . Twitterstream on #Cosifantutte

The Uncanny Opera Surprise

Opera singer Malesha Jessie - connecting with the crowd, the community, and future audience. Just amazing, and breathtaking.

When the soul gets touched :)

Kunst - kostet's oder bringt's was?

English speaking readers may find here a translation (done gratefully by GoogleTranslate)

Der heutige Sonntag brachte die Überraschung im Vorbereitungsstress zu #nbj2011 ("Imagine a future where innovations emerge from global partnerships across sectors, (also the arts field), etc.") als ich die Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung aufschlug:

Eine kleine Ökonomie der Oper, von Ralph Bollmann

Semperoper by e-concierge.de

Der zweiseitige Text - Oper und Kultur ist demnach definitiv im öffentlich Fokus - begann mit einer unerfreulichen Begebenheit aus Zwickau, Sachsen. Am Ende der vergangenen Spielzeit wurde die eindrucksvoll inszenierte Oper Genoveva nach der Pause jäh unterbrochen von einem Appell des Ersten Kapellmeisters an das Publikum und Bitte um Unterschriften gegen die geplanten Kulturkürzungen des Freistaats Sachsen. Was in Zwickau passierte ist ähnlich auch in den Landesbühnen Radebeul kürzlich noch viel dramatischer passiert - dort geht es um das "Aus" des Hauses.

Der Bericht - übrigens mit grandiosen Aufnahmen deutscher Opernhäuser gespickt - endet mit "Am Ende lässt sich über die Oper nicht eindeutig ökonomisch urteilen. Es bleibt die politische Entscheidung einer Bürgergesellschaft, ob sie diese deutsche Tradition fortsetzen will oder nicht."

.... PUNKT ... war es das gewesen? Gab es einen umfangreichen Dialog, zu "Was bringt Oper für die Wirtschaft, die Bildung, kulturellen Austausch?"

Meines Wissens nicht. Sollten hier Kürzungschritte unternommen werden von Politikern, die sich zwar auf Premieren ab und an sehen lassen, doch Oper oft wohl eher als "nettes Beiwerk" und "Touristenmagnet" sehen, ohne alle Möglichkeiten, Visionen und Chancen der Zukunft in Betracht gezogen zu haben.

Fragen, die durch meinen Kopf rasen. 40 (oder so) Besuche in den letzten 10 Monaten in der Semperoper Dresden haben (mir) ein vollkommen anderes Bild von Oper, Ballett und dem Sinn und Nutzen für eine zukunftsorientierte Bürgergesellschaft eines weltoffenen und innovativen Sachsen (und Deutschlands allgemein) eröffnet.

Mein persönliches Fazit und Ausblick (allzu gerne hätte ich Ralph Bollmann, übrigens in Berlin zu Wirtschaftspolitik zuständig, leider ohne Angabe einer Email-Adresse, zu einem Dialog eingeladen) als passionierter Volkswirtschaftschaftler und Systemsthinker ist doch ein anderer.

1. Good: sehr gute Übersicht über die deutsche Opernlandschaft, opulente Bilder z.B. vom Wiesbadener Staatstheaters und des Mecklenburger Staatstheater Schwerin, Bericht in einer überregionalen Sonntagszeitung (am Wochenende hat man doch ein wenig mehr Zeit zum Lesen)
2. Tricky: Fokussierung auf die "sichtbaren" ökonischen Größen, die sich in den Budgets der Länder wiederfinden und die Kultur so "teuer" machen
3. Learned: die wirtschaftlichen Effekte von Opernhäusern und die Implikationen auf kulturellen Austausch werden selten bis gar nicht betrachtet, gerade in ostdeutschen Städten mit relativ geringem Bevölkerungsanteil ausländischer Mitbürger zeigt sich insbesondere in den Ballettensembles ein Mikrokosmos der Welt (siehe Ensemblemitglieder des Semperoper Balletts, bei ca. 80 Mitgliedern sind ca. zwei Dutzend Herkunftsländer vertreten und die Quoten sind eindeutig zu Gunsten der ausländischen Tänzerinnen und Tänzern verschoben); Oper und Ballett eröffnen für Forscher, Wirtschaftler und Politiker gleichmaßen ein differenziertes Bild vom Heute und der Zukunft (viele der Balletttänzer z.B. beschäftigen sich mit Zukunftsforschung, was mich selbst zunächst überrascht hat, doch dann auf den zweiten Blick verständlich ist)
4. Action: ein Leserbrief an die FAZ Leserbriefredaktion wird folgen, die kommende Tour ins Valley rund um San Francisco mit Besuchen bei Opern anreichern

Wochenende in Dresden - wunderbare Stunden

As promised, time has arrived to write about the second performance I saw at the Semperoper. This thime it is not a Ballet but an Opera: Rusalka by Antonin Dvorak.
An Opera very new to me, never seen it before (actually not often performed in Italy). For this reason, I was looking forward to discovering what was waiting for me on stage. Will I like this Opera or not? Will the modern scenography and coreography the Semperoper always put on stage meet my taste or not? These were some of the questions in my head. I only had to wait the show to start to get the answers I was looking for.
At 7pm the curtains open and the show starts. What I see on scene is not so clear to me. A scene is repeted again and again, always exactly the same, like a song that once played till the end, it starts again and again.....it was like an introduction to the Opera itself, a kind of making the audience ready to what was coming to be performed very soon.
A few minutes later Rusalka starts.
On the scene appears a beautiful young woman in a metal silver dress, Rusalka, a nymph. Rusalka is unhappy. Although she sings in Czech language, Dvorak's mother tongue, the audience can feel she desires something she is not sure she will never have. The subtitles in German language help me to understand what's happening on stage.
Rusalka is in love with a Prince. Is this not strange? A "woman" belonging to the water world is madly in love with a man from the emerged world. Have we heard something similar in the past, maybe during our childhood? Well, the answer is yes. Suddenly I remember Hans Christian Andersen's "The little Mermaid". Also in this fairy tale the beautiful little Mermaid belonging to the water world is madly in love with a beautiful Prince from the emenged world.
Both the little Mermaid and Rusalka want their desire to become true: leave their world and become part of the new world, the emerged world. Starting a new life with the man they love. They wrongly believe that all will be fine there, the life easy and no difficulty arise.
Rusalka desperately asks her father, the Waterman, to help her in becoming a "real woman". Parents always play a key role in children's life, don't they?
This is not an easy decision for him. The Waterman knows the difficulties Rusalka will meet in her new life, he knows she will suffer and feel sad and alone but above all he deeply loves her. Rusalka has made her decision and he accepts it and leave her free to live her dream. It is not always easy for parents to leave children walk the path of life on their own legs!
Becoming a "real woman" has however a price (as all in life!). Rusalka has to give her beautiful voice to the witch who transforms her in a woman (the same happens to the little Mermaid). Now without her voice Rusalka enters in the emerged world.
Soon life shows to be not so easy as she thought. The Prince's love is reveled to be not so strong, being constantly temped by many "sexy" woman.
Rusalka starts to feel alone and sad and to be voiceless doesn't help her. She lives with pain and anxiety her new life and wishes she can have her old like back.
Often during the performace a column rises from the ground and goes up to the sky. Every time one of the characters is on it, the one the attention is focused on while all the rest of the scene takes place on the floor. I found this tricky very interesting.
I end writing that, as in Hans Christian Andersen's "The little Mermaid", there is no happy ending for Rusalka. As for all of us, life is not always easy. What we believe to be the best choice, the one that will make us happy, often shows to be not the right one, not the one that will make us happy. As always every choice and decision brings inside its consequences.

Impression on Jewels - by George Balanchine

Impression on Jewels

JEWELS the beautiful precious stones available in different colours that women love so much. Well, this time NOT. The "JEWELS" I had to do with is a beautiful ballet performed in three parts: Emeralds, Rubies, Diamonds.

Green like Emeralds, like childhood, like the first steps in the world. Music by Faure.

Red like Rubies, like teenage, like first love and passion made of skirmishes, games and fun. Music by Stravinski.

White like Diamonds, like the adulthood, the true love, the conscious passion, the tenderness. Music by Tchaikovski.

George Balanchine put all these emotions in his 3 coreographies. The result is an amazingly beautiful performance (2 hours in total).

To say the truth, I saw it twice. The first time I was fascinated expecially by the costumes and the music. Never seen costumes so magnificent, they are really jewels: Emeralds with green stones, Rubies with red stones, Diamonds with transparent stones. The performance was not so good as I expected it to be.

Yesterday I loved all the three performances and I loved them in full, costumes, music and dancers. They performed beautifully. All was perfect!

La Scala was full, not less then 2000 people (different ages) breathing at the same time, feeling the same emotions and expressing all their appreciation and their love after each performance, expecially after the second one, Rubies (my favourite too).

Among the 2000 people attending the performance, many came from abroad, German people, English people, East-European people and African people and also a nice couple coming from the west coast of Canada. They were in Milan for visiting the city, the museums and possibly a performance at La Scala. They sat next to my friend and me and we discovered they had no idea that a ballet performance was taking place in the afternoon and learned about it by chance. Nice to know that they try to attend a performance in every city they visit! The Opera (ballet or opera can be a mirror of people, a lot can be learned attending a performance in a city you do not know, it has to do not only with what performed on stage but with the behavior the people living there have).

One more lovely thing that happened during the performance had to do with the orchestra director Mr. David Coleman, a very friendly man. He danced on his place while conducting the orchestra during Rubies, I could feel he loved what he was directing, he felt the music deep in his body and in his soul and could not help dancing. I felt the same, I wanted to stand and dance the enchanted music written by Stravinski.

Another Emeralds is waiting for me soon....very curious to see how it will be!

How does SocialMedia Shape Cultural Institutions in the Future

This is an interactive action research experiment, connecting opera lovers around the globe, in sharing their experience with social media.

Interacitve international session in the context of http://startcamp-dresden.de (#scdd11 on Twitter):

""#Semperoper & how #SocialMedia plays a role connecting #opera crowd across globe"

http://twitter.com/RalfLippold/status/51548854012743680

Participants:

LingChan, http://twitter.com/girllightning former head  of social media of Vancouver Opera, http://twitter.com/VancouverOpera

AngelaIncampo, http://twitter.com/angieincampo opera fan from Italy 

RalfLippold, http://twitter.com/RalfLippold opera & ballet lover from Dresden

RaLi - Good morning, and good night, Ling and Angela, depending on your time zone.

Ling good morning everyone!

RaLi - this will be real "crazy" workshop experiment within #scdd11, the in these minutes starting barcamp in Dresden.

May I start of with the question about your person and what has brought you into the opera field?

Angela Hi

Ling - I love the performing arts, be it opera, ballet, plays or musicals. My very first opera was Turandot at The Met. I think it was in 2005 or 2006. Since then I became entranced by the artform of opera. When an opportunity to work for Vancouver Opera became available, I became interested and applied for the Assistant to Managing Director position. That was in 2007. I was with the company until February 2011.

Working at Vancouver Opera, I've come to appreciate opera and am now a convert. I still consider myself pretty new to the genre; only having been exposed to 14 operas. There's lots more to see!

When I travel, I do try to see if the city I'm in is performing an opera at that time. My last trip to Amsterdam in June 2010, I saw the world premiere of A Dog's Heart. 

I have always loved the old Greek theater and sow it in high school then, one of my best friend here in Italy is a young opera singer and I started my passion for opera thanks to him. I've always loved music expecially classical music but I went to my first opera " Tosca" by Giacomo Puccini with this friend.Then I started going also alone. Then, couple of years ago I started also with Ballet.....

Ralf - My initial connection to the opera was laid out decades ago. My grandma was a great singer, always sticking out of the chorus in church and my mother is an opera lover. Though what did not work when I was small switched when I worked in a large automotive plant and realized the interactions of the different groups are very ballet-like. Last year the Semperoper here in Dresden got a new director, a woman after 350 years, and I saw the connection as publicity arose (due to new website layout and other activities). I write a blog on economic issues of daily since 2008 and now often add reviews about performances on ballet and opera as well. 

As more I see and experience there more connections into "real life" and the work field.

Hi Ling, happy to know your first opera was Turandot (Puccini). I love it. Sow it once in the Petruzzelli Theather (Bari) and I will go to see it again in April at La Scala Theater (Milano).

Hi Angela!

Hi Ling!

Ralf - What is it that really really draws you to the field of opera, and is there something special you love most in the field?

A question...would it make any difference if an opera is performed as a concert and not as a traditional opera performance with all the costumes and scenography?

Angela, unfortunately, I've only so far seen opera in its most theatrical form. Not as a recital. Having said that, I love the whole spectacle of it: the singing, the orchestra, the costumes, wigs, make-up, set decoration, multimedia touches. 

Ralf - hehe. I think I anwered your last question when I was answering Angela's.  

Ralf - Loving the performing arts, also an inspiring element for my work, I love the multifacetted action on stage and the orchestra. Sensing the subtle changes in the field of the actors and seeing the "tipping points" is what challenges me and draws my interest. Ballet is the most fascinating part for as expressing emotions without voice is challenging your mind. You really have to let go to get what lies behind the sheer things you see on stage.

Love ballet. Just came from one tonight. Royal Winnipeg Ballet's, http://twitter.com/RWBallet, cross-Canada tour of Wonderland.

I love ballet too. But I realized I prefer the modern performance. Last year I went to see Giselle. I saw the traditional performance and then the Mats Ek's coreography with Roberto Bolle. Well I was really impressed by Mats Ek's. It fascinated me the modern style and the feeling it was real for our time.

Ling, Ralf Sorry but I have to go now....time over.

nice to meet you Angela! 

Ciao Angela and see you later!

Ralf, did you still want to continue or are you going into the conference now?

Ralf - What was it that made you aware that social media can be a helpful media facilitator for an opera house?

Social media is a fantastic tool, particularly to connect and communicate with new audiences. Especially younger audiences since they are all well-versed in social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter. Opera houses can use social media to engage and educate those new or curious abut opera, get them interested and hopefully turn them into lifelong supporters of the arform. 

In my past work I realized that the new communication tools, social media in the broadest sense, enabled me not only to find information on the web, rather - and more relevant - to interconnect with people across the globe. As the effort and money you need to connect across distances and time zones is almost zero, this new media landscape seems - for me - as facilitating tool for cultural institutions like museums and operas alike to connect with a much broader audience. Getting feedback in an instant by visitors, perhaps even during the performance, seeing the connections that are built up amongst fans of operas and people working on the ensembles is of great benefit for all.

The traditional media can't possibly act as fast and direct. When I visit a performance at Semperoper for example I can write a review within an hour after the event and put it online. As a visitor my personal views can be shared. Writing driven by my inner intent to share what I have seen and experienced is much different to a review a paid journalist will write in the first performance. 

You're absolutely right. The cost involved is minimal but social media is very time-consuming and labour intensive. Companies and employees have to be willing to put in the time and effort. 

That's correct - time consuming and labour intensive are definitely points not to underestimate. However when the activities are leverage across the fan base and even members of the ensemble find fields outside their professional. IstvanSimon, http://twitter.com/IstvanSimon, and IanWhalen, https://twitter.com/Ianwhalen1387, both members of the http://facebook.com/Semperoper.Ballett ensemble are strong in photography and video making of their team's performances.

Ralf - Where do you see drawbacks in stepping into the Web World for operas?

I don't see any drawbacks when it comes to opera companies utilizing social media. If anything, I think being transparent, 'lifting the veil' and dispelling any myths about opera is a good thing. It gets people interested. Opera is perceived too often as elitist and intimidating to those on the outside. 

Regarding your question about what worked well using social media:

For Vancouver Opera, what worked well for us was our blogger outreach initiative. We invited 4 bloggers to blog about their whole opera experience on opening night. They blogged about their thoughts pre-show, during intermission and after the post-show backstage party.  The bloggers would convey their thoughts to their readers, many of whom have never been to the opera. We started that in early 2008 and it was a successful initiative. We had many first-timers come to the opera after our first Blogger Night. 

Do you have a link to the Blogger Nights?

This really sounds awesome. In a way, I would call myself as one of these bloggers here at Semperoper - though the early mover at the moment. Started the minute I saw the connection to my own life and work.

Indeed!

Link to some of our Blogger Night posts:

http://vancouveropera.blogspot.com/search/label/Guest%20Bloggers

We had about 10 Blogger Nights already. 

Great. Thanks a lot Ling.

You're very welcome. I would love to continue the conversation, but I'm afraid I must be going now. That's the bad thing about being in different timezones! It's night and day.

I hope my contributions have been helpful to you!

Thanks so much Ling for joining in at this time of the day and sharing your thoughts. Looking forward to continue our conversation soon.