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KURT
WEILL - BERTOLT BRECHT: 1933.
"Degenerate
art" is the name with which the Third Reich baptized the aim of
the cultural barbarism of the Fuhrer: in front of the University of
Berlin, an authentic funeral pyre of the culture. Painters and writers,
architects and musicians, the Bauhaus, the expressionism, the musical
vanguard, all together in the point of aim of the Beast. And in the
throes of this, Weill and Brecht, united by their "degenerate"
vision of the letters and the music and, why not, for their aspiration
of improving their economic situation, at the fringe of the abyss and
the forced exile, immersed in the disturbing complexity of the contemporary
life in a time of unusual and dramatic intensity.
"The
7 Deadly Sins": 2001.
In
1933 the piece adopted the form of a "ballet chante" with
a Balanchine's choreography for the personal splendor of the dancer,
the producer's wife. Repeatedly protested by Bertolt Brecht of the bourgeois
character of this opening assembly, too much spectacular, moving and
dissolute for the correct view of the Brecht drama and the Weill's dense
sound atmosphere. In opposition to that historical premiere, the production
that we present deliberately offers a not psicologist interpretation
that understands and develops the work rather like a pantomime or an
immoral tale, without happy end. Where the schizophrenic double perspective
of (those) Anna(s) appears as an undesirable byproduct of this monstrous
capitalist society, more in the sense that we would understand nowadays
that both creators perpetrated it, without giving up to orchestrate
a new autonomous and original dramatic event.
We
offer in this occasion to the public an artistic assembly concentrated
in the intelligent theatral scheme and in the wonderful score. With
an austere staging that grants the due protagonism mainly to the lighting,
the action, the music and the rich backdrops, overhead projections of
an original artistic work that Victoria Contreras - accepting the challenge
that Cocteau refused at that time -, has known how to fit perfectly
with the piece, improving experience and enjoyment of the music and
the text in an environment of aesthetic view, having just drawn with
success what offers this way in all its splendor like one of the indispensable
works of the last XX Century Vanguard Theater.
< Poster of the production.
Copyright of all images
©2015 Victoria Contreras Flores. Not to be reproduced without attribution.
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