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AMAZONAS
Christian Zehnder, Photo: Regine Koerner
Dear participants on New Music Theater!
What do you believe in? Nothing? I dont believe you. Did you believe in the prosperity of shares? Than you definitely bit the dust during the last years. And didn't you also believe, that faith not only can NOT move mountains, but definitely not move a black guy into the White House?
We fellows, who are making theater, live on belief and feelings. Therefore we are not so stunningly surprised, when creedence all with a sudden becomes visible again, with all its enormorous power. Whether with such horrible consequences as in economy or with such wonderful chances, that came alive with the election of Barack Obama. If you do not believe what you see on stage and if we cant evoke your feelings, than we have lost.
We also believe, that art is able to get things moving in new directions, to change tendencies and trends. Thats why netzzeit is significantly involved in a music theater project of wide scope of Münchener Biennale that focusses on the Rainforest. More about the reception of this project in Munich and Sao Paulo below. And news about our upcoming Festival for New Music Theatre 2011 Out of Control will follow end of September.
Michael Scheidl
Artistic Director
AMAZONAS/SAO PAULO
On July 21st, 2010 the South American First Night of "Amazonas, Music Theatre in three parts" took place in Sao Paulo in SESCSP Pompeia, and was enthusiastically welcomed by standing ovations. All five performances in Sao Paulo from July 21st to 25th where completely sold out. Further performances of this project are in consideration for "XV Festival Amazonas de Opera" in Manaus in 2011. Performancess of the complete project in Vienna seem to be out of reach due to a lack of interest on behalf of potential coproducing partners. Parts of the project however will be shown in Vienna during "2011 Out of Control" at the earliest.
Christian Kesten, Mafalda de Lemos, Photo: Regine Koerner
AMAZONAS/MUNICH
MEDIA-ECHO
Astonishment at nature, greed, the instrumentalisation of natives, the right to exploit, being regarded as a legal action.
Schedl doesn´t illustrate. Schedl does not melodize text. Schedl overwhelms the spectator. His composition is based on pure sound, developed on computer. He extracts parts of this - by itself - amorphic sound substance, puts them into score, and passes it on to the fabulous ensemble piano possibile to interpret it. Computer-generated recorded sounds and the live orchestra imitate each other. The sound is full of brute force and fragile tenderness. Industrially abstract and than totally concrete again; the few singing-particulates comply with sound material, are rather eavesdropped than composed. Intellectually you hardly perceive anything, what is acted and sayed by these three live and at the same time enormorously enlarged projected performers (among them the fabulous composer - colleague Moritz Eggert). But the emotional force of this extreme music tells you a lot more about the european journeys into the heart of your own darkness, than the following, barely spelling could ever do. In an incredible clarity future appears, mean, sharp, vast.
Egbert Tholl, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 11.05.2010
TILT
"Tilt" (Directed by Michael Scheidl, stage design: Nora Scheidl), still somehow correspinds with conventional expectations: there are performers, a story, evident correlations between music and text, and a dulaity between stage and audience. The way, how the music - effectively presented by the ensemble piano possibile conducted by Heinz Friedl - turns the space into an event itself, dispatches the audience´s attention on a very special trip and opens the view towards the archaic moment of reckless gold-rush, which happens constantly again again til today...
..."THE FALL OF THE SKY"
What remains, is the space-defined voice art of theensemble and the sensible, maverick order of the electronically elaborated soundworld.
Hans-Jürgen Linke, Frankfurter Rundschau, 10.05.2010
"In this event whitness is beared (on highest emotional level) to how greed and dread invaded the rainforest.. The spheric, but partly effectively garage-rocky, computer- supported music performed by the ensemble "piano possibile", varies sometimes quite far away from "The Doors", and the scene has the kind of apocalyptic touch, that Marlon Brando made us feel in Coppola´s Vietnam-movie. "Amazonas": Pertinent, thrilling and through Klaus Schedl´s music it has a sound grasp of contemporary developments.
Mirko Weber, Stuttgarter Zeitung
Walter Raleigh´s records of his expedition at the end of the 16th century in the large valley of Orinoco and his quest of "El Dorado" constituted the substance of a one-houred performance. Faces, projected on huge screens of two men and one woman, sing, talk and scream live.
fascination, urge to posses, ignorance and finally brutal conquest culminate symbolically, when the gold-painted face of the woman becomes an object of avidity, becomes felt up by noumerous men´s hands. In the end the projections collapse in a cracked shift with the music getting louder and louder, which is in its synthetically created attack almost perciveable thruogh your body.
Klaus Kalchschmid, Die Welt, 17. Mai 2010
"Tilt" dallies with the dialectic between performers and their live projected faces (directed by Michael scheidl), sound datas and computer generated, acoustic structures stand for the violence, which is the driving force in exploiting our last natural resources since the 16th century.
In contrast to that the middle part of the project, "The Fall of the Sky", appears like an Intermezzo of real nature, that shows the Yanomami and the threat the suffer from, in a totally different scenery. All with a sudden theater becomes physical and concrete again, quasi real: The sounds and the figures of indigenous people and their shamans, zhy lyrics of the forest, all that talks to us in a wonderous natural, so to say magic way (directed again by Michael Scheidl, conducted by Heinz Friedl). The audience experiences this Intermezzo ambulantly in a way, becomes part of the event, influences it - and suddenly everything, what we call crisis in Europe, is focused exemplarily: With our merely unlimited devices and possibilities we strike ourselves dead, rescue, clarification would only be available out of the literally "other".
Georg-Albrecht Eckle, Der Tagesspiegel, 12.05.2010
Please have also a look at the video statements on website of Goethe Institut:
http://www.goethe.de/ins/pt/lis/prj/ama/enindex.htm
One should not believe that the trees do not scream with pain. Davi Kopenawa Yanomami
AMAZONAS
A Contemporary Music Theater Project in Three Parts
Multimedia Opera composed by Klaus Schedl, Tato Taborda and Ludger Brümmer
Libretto and dramaturgy for part I and II by
Roland Quitt, for part III by Peter Weibel
Direction for part I and II by
Michael Scheidl, for part III by Peter Weibel
Stage and Costume Design for part I and II by Nora Scheidl
Stage and Costume Design for part III by N.N.
In an extraordinary combination of music theater, technology and science, a multimedia opera illuminates the world of the River Amazon region and the endangerment of its unique resources. To emphasize the relevance of the subject, the opera will be accompanied by an educational program, conferences and publications. The latest developments in anthropological research will be integrated into the program. The multimedia opera's world premiere will occur in Munich at the Munich Biennale, than in São Paulo, Lisboa, Rotterdam and Vienna so far. The project will be presented to the general public for the first time during the Munich Biennale 2010.
The story of the opera is what Peter Sloterdjik referred to during the initial workshop in 2006 as "the Amazonian pain" – the fear of a threatening and irreversible loss. Its protagonist is the rain forest. The Yanomami people, one of the last of the great indigenous tribes of South America, provide it with a voice. Indian myths and the spirituality of the shamans are contrasted by a scientific-technical worldview. And thus a new perspective on all of the subjects connected with the River Amazon is created: the diversity of species, slash-and-burn, genocide, but also genetic engineering and climate change. The River Amazon region, populated for millennia, receives a dimension beyond that of being a mere resource that highlights the interaction between nature and culture.
German and Brazilian experts and artists are working together intensively, such as the composers Klaus Schedl (Munich) and Tato Taborda (Rio de Janeiro); and the media artists Peter Weibel (Karlsruhe), the Shaman Davi Kopenawa Yanomami (Watoriki) and the anthropologist Bruce Albert (Paris/São Paulo).The sociologist Laymert Garcia dos Santos (São Paulo), the media theorist Peter Weibel (Karlsruhe) are responsible for the general concept. For part I and II Roland Quitt creates the dramaturgy and writes the libretto, Nora Scheidl designs stage and costumes and Michael Scheidl is in charge of their scenic realization, the ZKM for part III.
World Premiere: 9 May 2010, Munich (further performances: 11 - 14 May 2010)
Brazilian Premiere: July / August 2010, São Paulo
Quotations: From "Minutes of Meetings April 2008" - Project Meeting (PDF)
Press: Experiment "Ópera Amazônia" in São Paulo
by Helmut Reuter, dpa, 7. Dez 2008, 12:55 (PDF)
Cooperation Partners:
Munich Biennale – The International Festival of New Music Theater
Center for Art and Media (ZKM), Karlsruhe
Goethe Institute, Munich, São Paulo and Lisbon
SESC São Paulo
Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, Lisbon
netzzeit, Vienna
Petrobras-Research Center CENPES
Yanomami Organisation Hutukara
Brazilian Ministry of Culture
The multimedia opera is part of the Goethe Institute's worldwide project focusing on the tropics.
Amazonas Opera at Münchener Biennale 2010 and in Sao Paulo/Brasil
The "Malocka" (village) Watoriki in Roraíma/Brazil. Foto: M.Scheidl
Michael Scheidl has been comissioned by Münchener Biennale and Goethe Institut/Sao Paulo, to realise an opera - project about Amazonas in 2010. The project is planned as a coproduction/co-comission of Münchener Biennale, Goethe Institute/Sao Paulo, SESC-Sao Paulo, ZKM in Karlsruhe under its artistic director Peter Weibel and the brazilian oil company Petrobras. netzzeit already takes over tasks in the fields of assistance and participitative management in developing the opera, and in coordination of the brazilian and german parts of the event. Furthermore the possibilities of guest performances of the production within 2011 Out of Control are in view. The project is sponsored by the European Union.
On invitation of Serviço Social do Comércio São Paulo, Goethe Institut and Münchener Biennale the composer Tato Taborda, Michael Scheidl as director and co-producer, the stage and costume designer Nora Scheidl, the dramaturg Roland Quitt, the anthropologist Bruce Albert, the sociologist Laymert Garcia dos Santos, the media artist Leandro Lima, Moritz Büchner as representative of ZKM - Karlsruhe and Sergio Pinto as representative of Serviço Social do Comércio São Paulo met in São Paulo and Northern Brazil during August 09, to work on the Opera together with the Yanomami, who inhabit an area of Rainforest as big as Switzerland on the brazilian side of the northern Rainforest of South America. They all have been invited for the second time in connection with the project by the shaman Daví Kopenava Yanomami, to visit his home village located between Boa Vista and the venezolan boarder about 300 kilometers away of the next street-connection deep in the rain forest. The first visit took place in March 2008 under the participation of the german composer Klaus Schedl who creates the first part of the Opera.
Watoriki - Logbook of a journey
Watoriki - Logbook
This is my report of the trip to Watoriki in August 2009 of artists, scientists, organisers and assistants being involved in the Amazone – Project to be performed in May 2010 in Reithalle within Münchener Biennale, at SESC – Pompei in August 2010 and at Museu da Electricidade in Lisboa in October 2010 so far.
On 13th of August 2009, round high noon, Davi Kopenawa Yanomami (shaman of the Yanomami), Bruce Albert (anthropologist), Moritz Buechner (video artist/ZKM), Laymert Garcia dos Santos (sociologist), Leandro Lima (video artist), Sergio Pinto (chief coordinator of the musical branch of SESC-Sao Paulo), Roland Quitt (dramaturg), Nora Scheidl (stage – and costume designer), myself as director of part I and II and Nayra (cook) left Boa Vista for Watoriki with 4 Cessna – airplanes. One of the planes went over Totobi (another Yanomami village in the Yanomamy - Territory) to pick up the shamans Levi, Andre, Isaias, who where supposed to be part of the workshop too, that took place in Watoriki on the following days.
13th August/afternoon:
Landing at Demini airfield, walking to Watoriki and getting settled.
Yanomami start cutting bamboo for carving flutes asked by Tato Taborda
These flutes will be part of the orchestra of Taborda´ s part of the Opera
14th August/morning:
In the Maloka: Yanomami start painting pictures with felt pen dealing with Xawara (the word means „smoke“ in yanomami language), the evil spirit, representing all bad aspects of the white man, and other motives.
In the Maloka: Yanomami continue working on the flutes
14th August/afternoon:
In the Maloka:Yanomami continue with their paintings.
In the Maloka: Yanomami continue working on the flutes
In the Maloka: Shamans from Watoriki and Totobi start a ritual of healing and prevention for different people and children in the village. There is also a dialogue with us within this session, that leads e.g. to some grotesque performance of a clumsy hunter by the shaman Levi from Totobi (another village in the region), who is a great actor and comedian besides his enormorous spiritual abilities and energy.
In the Rain-Forest: Moritz Buechner is guided to a waterfall by the Yanomami to take pictures for part III of the Opera.
In the Schoolbuilding: Meeting and discussion dealing with different aspects of the creation of the project:
- How can we use the paintings and drawings as a source for the dramatic visualisation of the shaman´s „brain pictures“? What size should the projections have? How many projections do we have? In what frequency we let them appear? How will Leandro Lima and Gisela Motta process the material? (participants of meeting: Nora Scheidl, Leandro Lima, Roland Quitt, Michael Scheidl, Tato Taborda).
In the Rain-Forest: Moritz Buechner – due to his mission - kept on wandering around and taking pictures focusing on nature shots.
Leandro collected Video- and Photomaterial for projection of lightspots for the labyrinth (= „inside the shaman´s brain“). His main motives where backlit-shots in and around the Maloka during the days, besides documentation.
15th August/afternoon:
In the Maloka:Yanomami continue with their paintings.
In the Maloka:Yanomami continue working on the flutes.
15th August/all day:
In the Maloka: All day meeting with the shamans telling us about their encounters and experiences with the missionaries. Important for Roland Quitt to create the libretto contents of Taborda´s part dealing with the missionaries. Important for me to study gesture and body – language of the Yanomami (durting their life - reports just as well as during their rituals) to study gesture, body language and mimic in order to develop an artificial manner of representation for the performing singers in the Opera. For all these resaons there is a lot of documentation of all these sessions over the days collected on movie cameras by Leandro Lima, Michael Scheidl and Roland Quitt. The life stories narrated by the shamans where very moving and showed their great personalities and human generosity, when it came to the activities of the missionaries, including any kind of possible betraying and exploitation of the Yanomami – including child – abuse. Many of today´s shamans have been brought up with the children of these missionaries, who either are or where their friends almost from age of zero (in other words: the second-generation-missionaries), so there is no black and white painting about the white people, but there are clear statements about the committed crimes.
15th August/all day:
In the Rain-Forest: Moritz Buechner leaves for the mountain behind the Maloka for some new shots including the overview and the impressive basalt – stone.
15th August/afternoon:
In the Schoolbuilding: Meeting and discussion dealing with different aspects of the creation of the project:
- Is there a necessity to have an embodied, material representation of the Maloka in the performance – space or could we realise it only by light and scatter material? (Quitt, Scheidl, Scheidl)
16th August/morning:
Yanomami continue with their paintings.
Yanomami continue working on the flutes
16th August/all day:
This day the most impressive incarnations of spirits and energies within an all day shamanistic session of all shamans of Watoriki and Totobi took place.
Meeting of Scheidl, Scheidl and Pinto to discuss stage adjustments for SESC – Pompeia, the Venue in Sao Paulo
17th August/all day:
In the Schoolbuilding: Meeting and discussion dealing with different aspects of the creation of the project: - Is there still some relation between the three parts of the Opera or is the developement going in a direction, where we can talk of three independent approaches to the same subject? (Laymert Garcia dos Santos, Quitt, Scheidl, Scheidl, Taborda, Lima, Buechner)
In the Maloka: Long talks with the shamans about their experiences with scientists, especially the story of steeling their blood for scientific matters.
In the Maloka: Most impressive farewell-speech in the evening by Davi Kopenawa including all best wishes for the project, translated all along by Bruce Albert. This is the moment to thank especially Bruce Albert - also in the name of all other participants - for his tireless translations all along our talks, activities and interactions with the Yanomami, and all his other support icluding his most valuable participation and counsel in our discussions, his advice and assistance almost around the clock. He was permanently „on duty“, as he was the indispensable key to all information and inspiration we could profit for the work ahead of us all.
18th August/morning:
In the Maloka: Getting packed for the trip back
Walking back to Demini airfield
Flying back to Boa Vista
19th August/morning:
Visit of Hutukara - Office in Boa Vista, talking with Davi Kopenawa about politicians
Besides that, we could whitness the daily problems of the Yanomami: An official of the government was expected to arrive from Brasilia, to assure himself of the health problems in the Yanomami – territory. But he already announced, that he is not ready to visit a village that is suffering from Malaria. He is only ready to go to a village without any serious health problems.
Maybe the most important result was the following conclusion:
The harmfulness of the so called „progress“ and „developement“, becomes more and more visible, the deeper we get involved in the project; and the more concrete form and content of the project emerges, the clearer we can perceive the roots of this harmfulness:
What does that „progress“ and that „developement“ mean after all?: To transform more and more ressources of any kind (including men) into commodities, by qualifying them only by evaluating only their degree of „usability“. After all, this is exactly what is done more and more excessively to the Rain Forest and its inhabitants – and finally to all inhabitants of the Planet.
During our daily talks, meetings and conferences in different formations along and besides all the work we did with the Yanomami, there came up a very enlighting argument between Roland Quitt, dramaturg and Bruce Albert, anthropologist, who accompanies and works with the Yanomami since decades: Roland quitt called Bruce Albert a scientist in connection with the „objective scientific few in field- researches, which includes the dogma of no interference for whatever reason, even in case of violence within the observed people aginst women e.g. and absolutely no empathy with them and their fate“. That was something that Bruce Albert would not accept at all, as he turned his back on that kind of science, that declares to do everything for „progress and developement of mankind“.
The impetiousness, with which Bruce Albert defended himself, and how ambitiously he espoused humanity instead of progress, developement, godliness and public blessing, made Roland Quitt remembering a Peanuts Cartoon, that hits the nail on the head – as we all agreed, including Laymert Garcia dos Santos and Bruce Albert:
Linus to Lucy: „When I will be grown up, I´ ll become a doctor.“
next picture: Lucy to Linus: „You can´t become a doctor. You hate mankind.“
next picture. Lucy goes away, Linus remains seated, - reflecting.
Next picture: Linus says to himself: „That is not true. I love mankind. - I just hate people.“
Day by day millions of representatives of all kinds of concregations, of science and whatever political movements commit any kind of crime for the sake and in the name of mankind, - on those people who are killed or betrayed by these crimes. And those poor people are not the inevitable last victims on the road to a better future, as those criminals try to make us believe, - on contrary they are the first victims on the road to a future without any human beings at all. If we should succeed to plunge this realizing 10% deeper into the cosnciousness of our audience, than we have done something in favour of all people – for the Yanomami (to be translated as: „Forest-People“) and for the Citizens (to be translated as: „City-People“) - AND for the Rain Forest, as the condition of the Rain-Forest more and more becomes an indicator for, whether the white man keeps on doing something „for mankind“ or whether he – after all – starts to do something for the PEOPLE – starting with doing something for himself.
Finally I would like to thank, also in the name of all other participants of the excursion, all the other people besides Bruce behind the project, who have been working hard for this excursion and who constantly work hard for the intensivation of the project and for a great outcome after all in May 2010:
Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, Lor di Val and all the other shamans and all inhabitants of Watoriki for their kind invitation, hospitality, ambitious support and numerous contributions to the project, the shamans of Totobi Levi, Andre and Isaias, who kindly joined the people of Watoriki to tell us their experiences and to join all rituals we had the joy to whitness, Joaquim Bernauer at Goethe Institute in Lisboa (and Sao Paulo before), as one of the inventors and constant „engines“ of the project, than Jana Binder at Goethe Institute in Sao Paulo now, and Carminha Gonghora keeping up the project and working there since years, not to forget Ilona Rechlin there, Tilman Broszat, and Andrea Hartenstein our bridge heads at Münchener Biennale, Sergio Pinto in Sao Paulo, our bridge head at SESC-SP, our friends at the Hutukara in Boa Vista, Carlo Zaquini, the white heart beating in Yanomami rhythm and -last but not least - Nayra, who cooked for us – to all these people we say thank you for your extensive, competent, professional, cordial and passionate dedication to this project. Werner Kraft from Münchener Biennale is already deeply involved in the preparations – thanks for all advice and thoughts along the staging – challenges and developements for Reithalle in Munich and the challenges of adaptions necessary for fitting the stage in at SESC Pompeia in Sao Paulo and at the Museu da Electricidade in Lisboa.
As this was only only the last step up to now on the way to the result in May 2010, we dared to mention first all the people in the first row of recent action, that was demanded. But we are well aware of the strong support of Peter Ruzicka at Münchener Biennale, Peter Weibel and Christiane Riedel at ZKM, Rosana Paulo da Cunha at SESC-Sao Paulo, just as well as of Bernt Lintermann and Ludger Brümmer and all other people involved from ZKM. - And we are already busy with intensifying our dialogue again with all artists involved, starting with Peter Weibel, Klaus Schedl (composer of part I), Gisela Motta (video artist) and many others who have not been with us in Watoriki.
Michael Scheidl (director)
Shaman Daví Kopenava Yanomami, the "Dalai Lama of the rainforest" (Berliner Morgenpost,18.10.2007): "All music comes from amoahiki-tree in the rainforest, the tree whos song has neither beginnig nor end."
ERNST KRENEK - REDISCOVERY OF THE YEAR
Albrecht Thiemann editor of "Opernwelt wrote: „In the past year Bregenz Festival moved to Operas into footlight again, that almost have quit the scene. The satire „Kehraus um St. Stephan" and the epically dimensioned music - drama „Karl V." For the first time the editorial team awarded the Bregenz Festival for "rediscovery of the year", because the extreme differences between these two opus made evident how contrasty Kreneks work is.
In 2008 the Bregenz Festival created a special Krenek-focus within its program. Matching the motto of the season, "might and music", they completed their programme with the by the opera "Karl V." and the time - critical operetta "Kehraus um St. Stephan". These two opus represent Krenek´s intensive contention with the upcoming political cathastrophy at the end of the twenties and the begining of the thirties of the last century.
Bregenz festival accepted the award with great joy. Pountney: „Good to see, that courage meets with approval".
„The enthusiasm of the audience after First Night and this critic-award show, how popular the so called "indigestive opera diet" can be." Pountney underlined, that he adresses his thanks to the performing artists, with the two directors Uwe Laufenberg and Michael Scheidl leading the way.
PzweiPressearbeit, Donnerstag, 22. Oktober 2009
Full article available on the net: http://www.pzwei.at/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=935&Itemid=49
netzzeit dignified Kreneks work in 1999 (the year before his 100th birthday) by performing the scenic Cantate "Die Zwingburg", the fairy tale opera "Das geheime Königreich" and the opera "Der Glockenturm" (the latter as a coproduction with Klangbogen). netzzeit congratulates all participants, the artists and stuff of Bregenz Festival, of Wiener Volksoper and of Luzerner Theater, who all contributed substantially to this appreciativeness.. Due to the fact, that netzzeit programmatically dedicated itself to recent contemporary music - theatre, productions of Krenek - Operas are excluded. But this does - of course - not change our deep respect and admiration for his great work, which should give direction in many concerns of today´s musical theatre composing.
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