saskia reis schön! magazine 18
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On The Phone With Katharina WagnerTRANSCRIPT
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I first spotted stylist Brett Bailey perched on the back of a sofa in an East London bar. Cross legged in thigh high boots and sporting a giant bow tie, he embodied all things glamorous and theatrical. I just had to talk to him.
From this epiphany was born a very special edition of Schön!, in which we bring you a celebration of show business – a business that our guest curator & creative director Brett Bailey is no stranger to. A professional dancer from the age of 14, he turned to fashion after Herb Ritts photographed him dancing with a Dior-clad Britney Spears. Since then he has styled showbiz icons such as Nicki Minaj, Tony Ward, and Rihanna. Who better to take us behind the velvet rope?
Gracing our cover is the ultimate show girl, Naomi Campbell, who blazes red, hot and cool, shot by legendary photographer Ellen von Unwerth. We talk to Terry O’Neill about fifty years of photographing the world’s biggest and brightest stars and to sex symbol, muse to Mugler and the classic catwoman Julie Newmar. Philipp Mueller shoots Aiden Shaw like you’ve never seen him before and Jenny Shimizu reveals what it felt like to break the mould of the super model stereotype.
As well as these showbiz veterans, we encounter the ingénues of entertainment, like fresh faced rapper Azealia Banks. The gorgeous Anya Kazkova glitters in gold in Glamour Addict. Meanwhile, entrepreneur, philanthropist and fashion icon Michelle Harper takes us down the red carpets of New York.
But behind the scenes there are also a host of characters who ensure that the show does go on, from Art Paul, the man behind the Playboy Bunny to the directors, designers and editors that make Hollywood happen, in It Takes a Village.
As always, we showcase superlative creative talent, such as stylist Anna Trevelyan and photographers Damon Baker and Amanda Demme. From Las Vegas, Los Angeles and New York to London, Paris and Amsterdam, fashion’s finest bring you all things sequinned, shiny and show biz.
There’s certainly no business like show business, so in the words of Mr Bailey himself, “Don’t just stand there. DANCE!”
Naomi Campbell byEllen Von Unwerth
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sChÖN! 18 CURATED BY bRETT bAiLEY
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ON THE PHONE WITH...Katharina Wagner
Ms Wagner, if you look at your life, what are you most proud of?
One is proud of stages in life. When you pass your A-Levels, then you are proud to have finished school, after that you are proud of your first production, actually just like everybody else. I think if we talk about the Bayreuth Festival, we have made a difference in the last few years, from the recording of the festival to the Opera for Children. We have led it in a direction that makes it more compatible with new media, like podcasts. In this sense, the festival hadn´t been up-to-date for a long time and I think this is something one can be proud of: to have initiated many successful things simultaneously, in a very short period of time.
You grew up in a house with a swimming pool. Some kids were very kind to you, others threw your sandwich on the floor, is that true?
Yes, but I guess that is one of the basic problems with our society. Time and time again, there are certain envy factors. Growing up with such a name is always a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it opens doors, which I do not think is right, because in many cases you have to deal with someone just because of a name, regardless of their competence. On the other hand, there are people who say you can´t do anything, because all you have is a name.
You have always been defined in relation to your ancestors. Despite constant public observation and critique, you have never let yourself be intimidated. What gave you such strong self-esteem?
My father, I guess. He was a relatively old dad, so I was given an education that strongly led me towards self-reliance. I don´t know the panic of young parents that often prevents the child from taking their own steps because of the danger of falling… My father’s life experience provided me with a very independent upbringing.
If you are in a position that makes you deal with the public sphere – in the theatre the critique is already part of the performance – you have to know if you are capable of the job and able to take critique. If you are not able to take it, you should neither become a director nor a theatre manager. But there are differences. With the years one learns to differentiate between serious criticism and gossip that is just awkward.
Which is your favourite Wagner-opera and why?
That is a very difficult question. All of them are so familiar to me, there´s almost no objectivity left towards the composer.
You say Wagner´s ‘Meistersinger’ deals, above all, with the question of what art is. What is art?
I think art starts when somebody generates a creative personal contribution – no matter if it´s a composition or an image. If you manage to express what’s inside your head, then it becomes art. This is a very broad definition: to have creative ideas and to express them. To implement an idea, that, to me, is the approach. Then there is taste, and we all know there is no accounting for taste.
As a child you observed your dad while he was working. Was your childhood an apprenticeship for your present-day activities?
One can say that indeed. Basically, by observing others, you learn - every day. And this was, to an extreme extent, definitely the case.
How was it to grow up in an opera house?
I believe my parents did that very cleverly: they always made me curious. But also I have always wanted to know things myself. I try to understand and to conceive things.
You studied theatre in Berlin and worked as Harry Kupfer’s assistant director at the Berliner Staatsoper Unter den Linden. Why Berlin?
First of all, Berlin has an incredible cultural scene and also my father had lived there for a long time. It´s a city where one can experience and see so many different things. Just look at the fact that Berlin has three opera houses – which other city in Germany can claim that?
In 1996, as an 18-year-old, you officially worked as an assistant director on the festival for the first time. What did you learn from your father? What I learned from my father, as well as from many other good directors, is the craftsmanship. Being an opera director is not solely comprised
of having ideas but also technical things: how people have to be positioned so they can see the conductor, the angles of the stage… Creativity you have or you don´t, but alone does not make a good director. On the other hand, you can have someone who is very talented technically, but does not come up with creativity. The combination of the two is crucial.
How would you describe your own style of directing?
Nowadays almost everything is called ‘director´s theatre’, but what does this actually mean? I find the term quite overworked, because all directors of my generation, but also Hans Neuenfels, Sebastian Baumgarten, Christoph Marthaler, and so on, are all lumped together as making ‘director´s theatre’.
In the end, the most important premise in directing is that I have a piece which evokes my deepest interest. This kind of modernisation - that´s how many people understand ‘director´s theatre’ - has nothing to do with that. I live here and now. There are certain historical facts, my life experience and influences that I just can´t ignore; and to have something play in another time, where it is originally located, doesn’t work for me. For me what’s important is if there’s a message in there that’s significant for me today. I try to carve that out and then, also to create theatrical images. It´s theatrical images you use as a translator. As soon as I have found those images, I reach a region that I can call direction. Direction does not consist of an idea that lasts for 15 seconds. Direction is stringent and keeps the suspense alive throughout the evening.
You assisted Christoph Schlingensief with his Parsifal-production in 2004. In a public farewell letter to Christoph after his death in 2010, you wrote: “I am not someone who cries easily. But when you go, friend, my soul is crying.” How do you define friendship?
Friendship means, I believe, knowing that there is someone who understands you no matter on which level: on an intellectual level, but also on a human level. Schlingensief was an absolute exceptional artist. I don´t know anyone else who continuously showed as many images, ideas and initiatives in such short time sequences in such a spontaneous way. He saw something and aimed at incorporating it instantly, almost like a compulsion. His workflow was very emotional, and that was the beauty of it. The outcome was always an immediate artistic image, without an overdose of intellectual reflection. Yet it was right, because he was an artist.
Katharina Wagner is the great-granddaughter of German opera composer Richard Wagner, the great-great-granddaughter of Franz Liszt and the daughter of director Wolfgang Wagner. She was born in the Upper Franconian city of Bayreuth in 1978. Today she is an opera director herself, as well as creative director and president of the Bayreuth Festival, a role she shares with her half sister Eva Wagner-Pasquier.
Willingly taking on the responsibility she inherited, Wagner has been a target for both celebration and critique. On her way from Berlin to Bayreuth she took the time to tell Schön! about growing up in an opera house, her approach towards directing and her vision for the new Bayreuth.
On 11th August 2012 the Bayreuth Festival broadcasts Richard Wagner´s ‘Parsifal’ by Stefan Herheim live to more than 100 cinemas in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Words / Saskia ReisImage / Enrico Nawrath
The public viewing in Bayreuth, the Wagner Opera for Children and the honorary professorship at the Academy of Music “Hanns Eisler” Berlin: what drives your motivation to mediate Wagner to young people?
The Opera for Children project is a case for opera in general. To me, it´s not that they implicitly have to be confronted with Wagner, it’s about giving them the opportunity to discover the genre of opera. When you go into school classes and talk to children about opera and have them draw costumes that they can later see on stage, the release of creative processes you can observe is incredible. They start speaking about the music; they say that they can hear waves and the sea in ‘Der Fliegende Holländer’ and ask how the instrument does that. You give children an impulse towards the excitement and ingenuity of classical music and you show that it can give you a lift and move you.
Regarding the public viewing, I think that opera, for many people, is not part of daily life. Music is something that you can approach very intuitively, you don´t need an intellectual background. I listen to music and I like it or I don´t. The public viewing is for people who maybe hadn’t thought about listening to it, in order to show them there is something they might like – it´s a ‘might’, not a ‘must’.
You have been and you are being observed and judged hypercritically regarding your work. What opinion do you have about German cultural critique?
I clearly have to say that I have a very high opinion of it. The exceptions can be counted on one hand. German critics have a very good knowledge on the pieces they review, and that is not the case in every country. They have a great aesthetic literacy and many possibilities of comparison, because they watch a lot. They deal with the subject matter. Above all, they criticise with arguments. German critics are ready to experience something new: they are very freethinking. I experienced other countries, where it was more like ‘this doesn´t work because there is no pasture, but it´s written in the piece, so it needs to be there.’ Luckily this kind of dull idiocy does not exist in Germany.
The exceptions I mentioned earlier lack objectivity to an extent that one has to ask how those responsible for the publications can accept that. There is this amazing example of the last opening of the festival that my father did himself. It was headline coverage, including images, and one major German newspaper wrote that Wolfgang Wagner did not open the festival. When there is such a deep hostility, it always leads in one direction, and at some point you stop taking things seriously. You start joking before a premiere: ‘Shall I pre-write the review of XY?’ Then you write the dullest and meanest that comes to your mind and most of the time
90% of that applies. But you don’t take it to heart anymore.
To many critics, Richard Wagner is considered as a representative of the National Socialist (NS) ideology. In 2009 you tasked an independent committee of historians to research the NS time on the Green Hill. A scientific conference in Bayreuth and the exhibition Silent Voices: The Bayreuth Festival and the Jews 1876 to 1945 (July to October 2012) deal with the handling of the Wagner-festival with its Jewish artists. What can you say about the status quo of the research process?
The exhibition is not an exhibition of the Bayreuth Festival; it is initiated by the city of Bayreuth. But we support it. I do not get involved in it, because then it would be like ‘she influences the historians’. I am the last one pushing things, because I do not want to expose myself towards any accusation of pressing for a result or manipulating it.
The controversial first big Wagner-concert in Israel has been cancelled recently. Was that a sign that it is really about time to provide clarification and to present results?
I absolutely believe that it is about time. And I am definitely obligated to do that, well maybe one is obligated, not me. However, I am the one who can provide documents that are in the festival hall, and records of my private ownership. I am not a historian, so I can´t evaluate those documents. Something that looks irrelevant or meaningless to me, for example an old fuel bill, can be of great value for a historian. So, in allocating the complete material I have, I do what I can do; but also other relatives have to participate, and that´s where the problem starts. Not everybody within the family is prepared to bring out the material. There are still papers with Amelie Hohmann, the daughter of Verena Lafferentz-Wagner (daughter of Winifred and Siegfried Wagner and granddaughter of Richard Wagner), and she strictly refuses to release the material she has, although all other relatives want her to do so. We need to get to this point where we say it is our obligation to clarify.
Wagner´s 200th birthday and the 130th anniversary of his death make 2013 the ‘year of Wagner’. The programme from Leipzig to Bayreuth is huge. What are your personal highlights?
What I am really happy about is that we have managed - in cooperation with Leipzig, the city of Wagner´s birth - to stage his early work in Bayreuth. They are the first operas not staged in the festival hall, but in Bayreuth´s Oberfrankenhalle. That´s a highlight for me, offering the audience to see those rarely staged pieces like ‘Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen’, ‘Das Liebesverbot’ and ‘Die Feen’.
When you and Eva took over the festival in 2008, most of the major plans until 2015 had already been arranged. What visions do you and Eva have for the new Bayreuth, as soon as you will be able to organise more freely, and what kind of challenges are you facing along the way?
What we need to do now is to plan for the years after 2015, because in this business you cast well in advance. Also the administration structure has become quite difficult to deal with, having grown from one partner, Wolfgang Wagner, to three public partners. Regarding the vision, one has to distinguish between reality and dream. The vision of Bayreuth has to be, especially as we solely stage Wagner, to stage productions that are pioneering within the reception of Wagner. I hope we will achieve that in the coming years.
Can you imagine doing something completely different? What is Katharina Wagner´s alternative to Bayreuth?
Well, I am a director as well. By all means I can imagine focusing on directing, that is definitely an alternative. And if you ask me now, ‘what if you´d be young again, would there be another profession that you´d like to learn?’, then I would say an absolute alternative to this would be becoming a lawyer. However, it´s the case that my profession as a director is such a pleasure to me, so if I did not have Bayreuth, I´d just direct more.
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