New Tannhäuser in Bjørvika, Oslo

(courtesy for photos Den Norske Opera og Ballett)

Brilliant way of recreating Wagner's grand opera placing it in a Salvation army context. This is actualizing the opera from the old themes of whore and madonna, pleasure and sin, to also questions of being seduced and staged - even by the heavenly forces.. Salvation army leaders and followers - singing for the good for others - become seduced by own fundamentalism, rituals, and double morality. Doubt about what is the right way remains a recurrent theme throughout this opera. The intricate play of seduction is helped by comedian elements.
Stefan Herheim and his team give us highly scenic and fun qualities showing glimpses of opera history in the opening scenes and of heavenly forces in the final ones.

Brief interview with Stefan Herheim, the director here:

http://www.nrk.no/nett-tv/indeks/203381/

Key info (in Norwegian):

Opera av Richard Wagner, premiere Den Norske Opera og Ballett 6. mars.

Regi: Stefan Herheim,

scenografi/kostymedesign: Heike Scheele,

dramaturgi Alexander Meier-Dörzenbach

Roller premiere: Tannhäuser: Gary Lehman, Elisabeth: Elisabet Strid, Venus: Judit Németh, Hermann, landgreve av Thüringen: Magne Fremmerlid , Wolfram von Eschenbach: Geert Smits

***

I want to add that I really enjoyed the eminent Swedish singer Elisabet Strid as Elisabet!

Iran today: what is happening now?

I can only say, stop the killing. Respect the dignity of people, along the lines Obama said.

Mousavi yesterday, Sat 20.6.2009

http://different-ways.co.cc/?p=332

Mousavi message on Twitter:
- I am prepared For martyrdom, go on strike if I am arrested #IranElection
(about 17 hours ago from web)

Yet, there is much confusion now in Tehran. The big Q is, what happens next?

Now people asks, acc to twitter sources, where is Mousavi?

And 5 members of the Rafsanjani family (he was expresident) is said arrested. Worrying news.

What is happening behind the scenes?

People suffers in the streets.

Movie on 60s Pirate Radio station: The Boat That Rocked

23 May, Oslo: 

Saw fantastic film Yesterday, The Boat That Rocked, by Robert Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, etc). This movie, however, is not romance but rather about a weird gang of DJs and a pirate radio station broadcasted from an old boat out in the North Sea. With lots of 60s good pop music to enjoy.

THE PLOT is the weird DJs fight to keep up their Pirate ROCK Radio station against the British Government including a stiff, control-driven Minister (played by Kenneth Branagh) and some overeager Gov officials. We´re back in mid 1960s (1966 I think it says in the film) when the British Government did not like this music nor its broadcasting, and BBC allowed only a very limited time for the new pop music played in official channels, as far as known. 

POP MUSIC SPREAD QUICKLY. Despite limited BBC access,  the 60s new pop music did not stop but rather spread fairly quickly and eventually became a flood-shed. Pop music gained increasingly more in popularity... whether listened to from radios stuck secretly under children´s pillows or shared more in the open by teenagers and eventually others, in variable places indoors or outdoors, thanks also to new transportable radios.

 

I wonder how this diffusion was actually feasible when BBC and Government were restricting the pop music broadcasting severely at the time? How active they were I do not precisely know, could be interesting to know more about this. (I´m not an expert in this field and was a bit young at the time but my friends remember more and listened to e.g. Radio Caroline. We also have a record with authentic recording from this and other pirate stations). 

Anyway, a lot of new pop-based pirate radio solutions popped up so to speak... What is only hinted to in the film, is the role played by commercials. It was probably not merely the closed state broadcasting regime but perhaps also (or even more) the actions of numerous commercial interests spreading ads in relation to popular music programs that nourished an outside-the-shore pirate solution. Broadcasting via boats and a "free ocean solution" seemed to be financed by commercials and was tried successfully for some time... opposing and bypassing the severe restrictions on the British island. Remember Radio Caroline and other pop and commercial boat solutions at the time. 

This is timely to remember now in our new pirate music and movie situations, I guess...

And if you enjoy pop music from the 60s as well as  the DJ lads´ongoing relationship plays - a thrilling mix of bad and good behaviour  and much humour - this is smth for you. Enjoy. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/5049946/Richard-Curtis-talks-about-his-new-film---The-Boat-That-Rocked.html

Twist theatre festival in Oslo opened yesterday

FULL HOUSE ON OPENING NIGHT. I entered "Riksteatret" Yesterday (31. Oct 2008) around 7.30 p.m. The lobby was crowded with young people (and some oldies like us) enjoying meeting each other on a Friday night as well as the opening wine and a key speech by Fabian Stang, the major of Oslo (relevant here to mention that he is son of Wenche Foss, an excellent actress in Norway). Standing in the back near to the ticket counter we could only hear a few of his words but I guess he underlined the value of this brand new theatre festival. It is indeed an interesting joint effort and creative collaboration among three theatres: Riksteatret, Nordic Black Theatre, and Det Åpne Teater.
http://www.twist08.no/home/
"SIZWE BANZI IS DEAD" GUEST PLAY. After the opening, most of us entered the stage room to experience "Sizwe Banzi is Dead," by Fugard, Kani and Ntshona.
The play is problematizing many things including the absurdities of power relations and ways of expressing this in work and societal relations between black and white people. Especially, it explores the shift of and playing with - even stealing - identity and manners when two poor guys in a township of South-Africa finds a dead man's passport... and plays with it in a hostile South-African city setting: "A black man stay out of trouble? Impossible! Our skin is trouble!"
With: Habib Dembélé, Pitcho Womba Konga

Regi/director: Peter Brook
Light design: Philippe Vialatte
Scenografi: Abdou Ouologeum

Production: C.I.C.T. / Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord

Translation to French: Marie-Hélène Estienne

BRIEF INTRO (in Norwegian): Handlingen foregår i en sørafrikansk township, bosetning, og er forfattet av en av landets mest kjente dramatikere, Athol Fugard, i samarbeid med de opprinnelige skuespillere. Urpremièren var i 1972. Men oppsetningen som nå besøker Norge, er fra 2006, og er satt opp av den engelske teaterlegenden Peter Brook og hans franske kompani Théâtre du Bouffes du Nord. - Kan føye til at noen husker kanskje oppsetningen i Bergen i 1972 med bl.a. Lothar Lindtner, også en teaterlegende!
Source: http://oslopuls.aftenposten.no/kunst_scene/article94807.ece

EVALUATION: 6 points! The two black actors were amazingly good and communicated excellently even when speaking French to a Norwegian audience. Among the best performances I have ever seen - with only two actors and sparse resources. Just a few cues: the two guys were excelling in using their body language, voice and facial expression and playing with gestures (smile!), movement, and sound... exploring the audience's sense of humour as well as empathy by being uniquely present on stage "with us"... but using only a very few stage furnishing tools (In Norwegian: en krakk og noen papp-plater, et par stativer som fungerte som dører og vegger, en sko som repr. en død mann).
PETER BROOK-DIRECTING. A background to understand their way of acting and using the few sparse tools creatively is knowing about the approaches and thinking of Peter Brook, one of UK's greatest theatre directors (recently awarded the Norwegian Ibsen prize). He is known, for example, for his 'empty space' approach, daring to take away anything that can hinder the actor becoming present and preparing hard for the performance as a unique event to be born, to put it very briefly.
TWIST LEADERS. Before the play started, on stage, three leaders of the three collaborating Oslo theatres were greeting us shoulder-to-shoulder, a very symbolic and warm welcoming to this new festival. Instructive handy program folders available as well. Congratulations!

"An independent music republic": West Eastern Divan Orchestra

Noa Chorin, Cellist for the West Eastern Divan Orchestra, photographed on the beach in Tel Aviv, Israel. Photograph: Antonio Olmos Courtesy also The Guardian, 13.6.2008.

The West Eastern Divan Orchestra performed in Oslo Yesterday 20 August 2008.
- We can play because we are a mixed group of people... We enhance each other! Said Daniel Barenboim, the conductor, to the audience after receiving recurrent applauding in the Oslo new opera (a white marble space with wooden interiors, designed by Snøhetta - a good place for such music and human events).
Co-founders of this orchestra, Daniel Barenboim (born in Buenos Aires 1942, Russian-Jewish parents) and Edward Said (Palestine-American author) took the name from a series of late poems by Goethe during his study of Arabic and Persian verse, Divan meaning 'the other', according to reporter Ed Vulliamy (see link below).
The orchestra when in Oslo played German music - from W. A. Mozart's concerts (Concert for three grand pianos, The "Lodron") and even R. Wagner (1 part of Valkürien), the latter with three excellent singers, Waltraud Meier, Simon O’Neill and John Tomlinson. - Though in the beginning I missed Rene Pape... who was originally scheduled (he was expected to rehearse also for Carlos: Pape is singing in this autumn's big opera event in Oslo, Verdi's Don Carlos, in late September (and he is also coming in early October). Yet, the singers who did perform Yesterday "sang each other up" as we say in Norwegian. It became very moving.
Nonetheless, even more interesting for me Yesterday was to listen to the vital interplays of the young musicians in this highly special orchestra encompassing musicians from Palestine and Israel to Egypt and other nations in the Middle East. "Each of these musicians are courages persons just to come here", explained the conductor vividly to us (the audience).

"They meet in Sevilla each summer" to rehearse, which fits this realworld story: Daniel Barenboim explicitly pointed to the old (but later destroyed) civic tradition in Andalucia - of allowing Jews, Arabs and other people to live and work in the same place(s) in Southern Spain (for more elaboration, see "Abraham's children", an essay by prof Trond Berg Eriksen, UiO, in Morgenbladet, 2007).

I guess it is also attractive for the young very good musicians to meet and work with Daniel Barenboim as well as other excellent music artists. Barenboim was recommended by the conductor legend Wilhelm Furtwängler already as an 11-year-old. Now Barenboim is recreating magic with the new generations of musicians from the Middle East and audiences worldwide.
Thanks for coming to Oslo!
Birgit

Ps let me add some extras,
- LINKS in English:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/jul/13/classicalmusicandopera.israelandthepalestinians
and www.danielbarenboim.com.
- LINKS in Norwegian:
1. "an independent, musical republic..." (Courtesy to Press news of the Norwegian opera and ballet):
"- For meg er dette en suveren, uavhengig republikk. I vårt orkester spiller israelere, palestinere, andre arabere og kristne i full likeverdighet. Musikken er vår store sjanse. Ordene tilhører den argentinsk-israelske dirigenten Daniel Barenboim som i morgen leder sitt West-Eastern Divan Orchestra på Hovedscenen i Operaen. Orkesteret ble grunnlagt av Barenboim og den palestinske forfatteren, aktivisten og professoren Edward Saïd etter at de to møttes tilfeldig i London i begynnelsen av 1990-tallet. Med bakgrunn i hver sin side av den palestinsk-israelske konflikten, fant de fram til en felles visjon for kunstnerisk samarbeid på tvers av politiske og religiøse skillelinjer.
Siden 1999 har det anerkjente orkesteret fungert som en musikalsk og politisk brobygger, de har flere cd-innspillinger bak seg og har spilt i konserthus over hele verden. Etter at Edward Saïd døde i 2003, drives orkesteret videre av hans enke Mariam Saïd foruten Barenboim."

2. For a field research reportage, see this article (courtesy to Morgenbladet, Oslo):
http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=8280192458170847866&postID=39684069094936102

3. For more on Intercultural dialogue, see a seminar 13 Sept 2007 in Oslo by UNESCO and Polytechnic Society: http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=8280192458170847866&postID=39684069094936102

Zhang Yimou

Congratulations to Zhang Yimou, the cultural teams and thousands of contributors!

I enjoyed the magic opening ceremony 8.8.2008 from OL Beijing directed by Zhang Yimou.

He happens to be one of my favourite moviemakers for some years as well - since I saw Red Sorghum. - Earlier this year I also saw several other movies directed by him, e.g. more realistic ones such as The story of Qui Ju. Luckily I came over a dvd collection when in South China in November 2007, a great find!

Now back to OL 2008 in Beijng. The Olympic opening was spectacular, epic, and also had interesting ingredients that perhaps sharp observers noticed.

When can I see this opening again on NRK?

and when can I get the movie mentioned on DVD, I wonder?