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By ANDREW POWELL MUNICH \u2014 Next Wednesday (Oct. 16) new portraits go on display in Bavarian State Opera\u2019s lobby. Twenty-one new portraits.<\/p>\n Astrid Varnay<\/a>, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau<\/a>, Kurt Moll<\/a>, Brigitte Fassbaender<\/a>, Lucia Popp<\/a>, Edita Gruberov\u00e1<\/a>, Ren\u00e9 Kollo<\/a>, Hildegard Behrens<\/a> and Waltraud Meier<\/a> are among the worthy singing subjects, company troopers all.<\/p>\n But theatergoers expecting traditional oils on canvas in pretty frames may be in for a shock.<\/p>\n The new dauerhaft<\/em> pieces embrace painting, drawing, tapestry, photography, hot wax, and at least one video requiring its own flat-panel display, to be hung in a hall that once serenely separated our electronic world from the madness on stage.<\/p>\n To create space in the company\u2019s 114-year-old portrait collection, fifteen tired canvasses recently disappeared into das Lager des Theatermuseums<\/em>, a.k.a. deep storage, leaving bare walls.<\/p>\n Safe, at least for now, are well-varnished depictions of such epoch-defining Munich musicians as Heinrich Vogl<\/a> and Therese Thoma<\/a>, Wagner\u2019s first Loge (1869) and first Sieglinde (1870).<\/p>\n But 21 new faces? The growth spurt \u2014 involving the same number of visual artists and two years\u2019 gestation \u2014 is intended to correct a lull. Apparently only conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch<\/a> and impresario Peter Jonas<\/a> have been added to the collection since the 1960s.<\/p>\n And it serves another purpose. Fifty years have passed since Bavarian State Opera<\/a> resumed operations at Munich\u2019s National Theater<\/a>, on Nov. 21, 1963, long after the house was cratered by Allied bombs. Rebuilding cost: 60 million Deutschmarks, or thereabouts.<\/p>\n Friends of the company (Freunde des Nationaltheaters M\u00fcnchen e.V.) wanted to seize the occasion to acknowledge the work of singers in each subsequent decade.<\/p>\n The result is portrait commissions that are a little front-loaded. Hermann Prey<\/a>, for instance, who sang leading roles starting<\/em> in the 1960s, is honored alongside salad-green contributors such as Klaus Florian Vogt<\/a>, who began in the 2000s and may or may not prove to be a singer of lasting artistry.<\/p>\n At any rate, the collection is made current, and presumably hipper, by this large initiative.<\/p>\n Other subjects of the commissions include Munich favorites Margaret Price<\/a>, J\u00falia V\u00e1rady<\/a>, Wolfgang Brendel<\/a> and the still-active, though wobbly, Peter Seiffert<\/a>.<\/p>\n An odd choice is Fritz Wunderlich<\/a>, the honey-toned Mozart tenor who died young. He went through the company\u2019s apprentice program before the house reopened, but then bolted for a career contract in rival Vienna.<\/p>\n Today\u2019s singers in the lineup, besides Vogt, are Anja Harteros<\/a>, Diana Damrau<\/a>, Jonas Kaufmann<\/a>, Christian Gerhaher<\/a> and Wolfgang Koch<\/a>.<\/p>\n Administrative enthusiasm and the sheer scale of the effort have led to at least one creaky assignment, its outcome already made public, that for Damrau. The soprano gets photography-based treatment<\/a> that manages to degrade and marginalize her without giving the viewer a sense of who she is.<\/p>\n With luck, this will be the qualitative exception.<\/p>\n Bronze busts of the company\u2019s music directors, meanwhile, comprise another facet of the theater\u2019s art. At present this series is complete through Zubin Mehta<\/a>, who left in 2006.<\/p>\n As it happens, a new Generalmusikdirektor<\/em>, Kirill Petrenko<\/a>, took over last month on a five-year contract, and so the just-departed Kent Nagano<\/a> will likely soon be commemorated in three-dimensional metal.<\/p>\n Print and online material related to the company\u2019s 2013\u201314 season<\/a>, not incidentally, showcases black-and-white photographs of the bombed-out house as well as 1963 crowds after the reopening.<\/p>\n Soberly its slogan taps Nietzsche: Wie man wird, was man ist<\/em>.<\/p>\n How One Becomes What One Is<\/a> \u2014 a smooth segue to a bleaker side of the retrospective. Official research has at last begun into correspondence between the Nazi Party and two former Bavarian State Opera GMDs, Richard Strauss<\/a> (tenure 1894\u20131896) and Clemens Krauss<\/a> (1937\u20131944).<\/p>\n Petrenko, looking forward, gives his first concert next month, a freebie with Nina Stemme<\/a>, Kaufmann, and the virtuosic Bavarian State Orchestra<\/a>.<\/p>\n A few days later, on the anniversary itself, he leads a new staging of Die Frau ohne Schatten<\/em>, the opera that reopened the National Theater under GMD Joseph Keilberth<\/a> one day before Kennedy was shot.<\/p>\n Some of Petrenko\u2019s initial work will be streamed at www.staatsoper.de\/tv<\/a>: Die Frau ohne Schatten<\/em> (directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski<\/a>) on Dec. 1; La clemenza di Tito<\/em> (Jan Bosse<\/a>) on Feb. 15, 2014; and Die Soldaten<\/em> (Andreas Kriegenburg<\/a>) on May 31.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s hoping the new portraits, in the aggregate, adequately reflect the virtues of this remarkable institution!<\/p>\n Photo \u00a9 Wilfried H\u00f6sl<\/p>\n Related posts:
Published: October 13, 2013<\/span><\/p>\n
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