Otto Schenk, an actor who grew to become a famous director praised for conventional opera productions and criticized by advocates of up to date approaches, died Thursday at age 94.
Schenk lived in Austria, and his loss of life was introduced by the Vienna State Opera.
He created 31 productions there, beginning with Janáček’s “Jenůfa” in 1964 and ending with Janáček’s “The Cunning Little Vixen” in 2014. A lot of his creations stay in use, together with a 1979 model of Johann Strauss II’s “Die Fledermaus” that was streamed all over the world on New Yr’s Eve.
“Otto Schenk is an essential, unforgettable chapter in the history of our theater,” Vienna State Opera Director Bogdan Roščić stated in a press release. “But he was also an artist who shaped the world of theater for half a century like few others. As sacred as the theater was to him, he approached the works naturally and fearlessly, drawing on an immense knowledge. An infinite love for the singers went hand in hand with hard, uncompromising rehearsal work and honesty. ”
Schenk led 16 productions at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, beginning with Puccini’s “Tosca” in 1968 and ending with Donizetti’s “Don Pasquale” in 1996. His staging of Wagner’s four-work “Der Ring des Nibelungen” premiered from 1986-89 and was proven in 20 full cycles from 1989 to 2009 and broadcast on public tv in 1990. Schenk acquired an enormous ovation when he took a curtain name after an April 18, 2009, efficiency of “Siegfried.”
His romantic, life like staging had set designer Günther Schneider-Siemssen create photographs of a river, forest and mountains dominated by greens and oranges, and costumes by Rolf Langenfass that evoked the unique Ring of the 1876 Bayreuth Pageant. It was in a method a response to Patrice Chéreau’s centennial Ring at Bayreuth in 1976, set in an industrial age Ring and interpreted by some as Marxist.
“I wanted to tell a romantic old story, like starting with ‘Once upon a time,’” Schenk stated throughout a 1989 interview with The Related Press. “All the secrets of Wagner’s Ring should be guessed by the audience or found by the audience.”
Born in Vienna, Schenk studied appearing at Vienna’s College of Music and Performing Arts, started directing in 1953 and led his first opera, Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute),” at Salzburg’s State Theatre in 1957. He continued to behave and carried out 237 occasions on the Salzburg Pageant from 1950-97, changing into head of drama there from 1986-88.
“The theater world has lost one of its greatest phenomena, an exceptional artist, a real legend,” present Salzburg Pageant inventive director Markus Hinterhäuser stated in a press release.
On the Met, his stagings of Offenbach’s “Les Contes d’Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann)” and Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” in 1977 earned rave opinions, and Met inventive director James Levine picked him to direct a brand new Ring Cycle plus Wagner’s “Parsifal” in 1991 and “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” in 1993.
“At a time when many new productions of `Der Ring des Nibelungen’ might be more aptly entitled `Der Ringling des Barnum und Bailey,’ the Metropolitan Opera’s staging of Wagner’s epic has cast a vote for the notion that maybe, just maybe, the composer knew best,” New York Instances critic Donal Henahan wrote in 1989. “The Metropolitan’s trend-bucking project has aroused widespread suspicion, even resentment. `Traditional,’ `conventional,’ `regressive’ and `childishly representational’ were some of the nicer epithets thrown about in lobbies and in print. … Even granting the possibility that radical rethinking of Wagner’s works might occasionally stimulate thought about their everyday relevance, a staging that pays honor to the original is a useful counterbalance.”
Met displays had been lengthy dominated by Schenk and Franco Zeffirelli, who had 11 stagings that premiered from 1964-98. Schenk stated he didn’t search for hidden meanings.
“Wagner in his life gave no indication on what the Ring meant,” Schenk informed the AP. “He didn’t interpret.”
