Lohengrin - Schedule, Program & Tickets

Lohengrin

Romantic opera in three acts
World premiere on August 28, 1850 in Weimar
Premiere at the Deutsche Oper Berlin on 15 April 2012

In German with German and English surtitles

4 hours 30 minutes / two breaks

Election campaign in Brabant - Kasper Holten stages Wagner's LOHENGRIN as a timeless political power play: Putin arm wrestling and digging up an ancient amphora, Putin as pilot of a firefighting aircraft, not forgetting the picture with the Siberian tiger! Putin diving, climbing, racing cars and trying to squeeze a frying pan. Whether he did the latter is not documented, but that's not the point. What matters is the pose, the staging of the hero. The message associated with this, of course, is: Do you want the shining victor at the head of the state, do not ask where he came from or how he gained power, because he wants to lead you to salvation. Some politicians who shone the brightest, the most self-assuredly into the cameras in this country, are no longer in office, because we asked about their past and pulled unpleasant truths to light. "If you recognize him, he must pull from you."

If one imagines Lohengrin as one of those politicians who dominates the media gesture and tries the strongest images and legends to build a myth of salvation around him, one can easily understand him as a power-political Blender, scenting his chance, in derelict German landing a new one State, a new system to establish a new ideology. One can detect surprisingly many passages in Wagner's text and music that would prove and support such a reading. Take, for example, the question ban: Elsa is in mortal danger, is charged with the murder of her brother Gottfried. Lohengrin offers her help, but by no means unconditionally. Before he fights for her, he proposes a deal for her: she should marry him, but never ask who he is. Of course she agrees, what else is left? A true hero would have chosen a different order. Elsewhere, Lohengrin also proves to be a less than fair partner elsewhere: her panic that he could leave her again, he soothes: she need not worry if she just sticks to his bid. A little later he reveals that he intended to stay only a year, then return to his homeland. He was not concerned with the woman, but with the position she could give him. His goal was the political game. Elsa was the stage on which he made his big appearance. It was an easy election campaign in Brabant.

Of course, the penchant for political calculation does not make Lohengrin an intriguer of the same kind as a Jago, this role is more likely to come from Ortrud, who, as the adversary of the young ambitious man, struggles to maintain the old order in the state - with her husband Telramund at his head. To see the Swan Knight as a thoroughbred politician whom one adores despite his obvious tricks illustrates that strategic political manipulation is often perceived as a necessary method in statesmanship. Even a blatantly hypocritical demonstration of steadfastness, vitality and strength can be applied far more to the easily influenced fearful citizen than to righteousness and utopian good-humourism.

One might find the media hero Lohengrin sympathetic and the power struggle athletic, threatened there was not a war, did not sound there already the devastating battle calls. Given the bloodthirsty belligerence that grows in Wagner's work, and given that the election winner - whoever it is now - will lead thousands of men to war and turn women into widows, given the delusion that war is An honorable undertaking that could be a worthy adventure for young men immediately stifles any trivializing gesture towards publicity misleading. If, according to the motto "Who is not for us, a war is instigated against us" and called to fight for life and death, principles of rational political insight are put to the test, whether it is a democratic state, or a sovereign state pretending to be concerned about the social well-being of its citizens.

Elsa understood that. She sees through Lohengrin, she questions him, exposing his selfish love of power, even if she sees no alternative for her country, even if there is no successor to the ruler of Brabant in view of the disappearance of Gottfried. If the convicted hero wants to remain in power, he must develop serious intentions and prove himself a self-proclaimed protector of the people, or in other cases, a "flawless democrat", for from now on he is under surveillance. He has to assert himself without the tank of myth and the charisma of the foreign power Guided abjure. And then we'll see.

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