Hermann Nitsch: Wiener
Staatsopernballett
Igor Stravinski/Hermann Nitsch
Festspielhaus St.Poelten/Austria, June 12th, 1998
At the opening of the
Lower Austrian Donaufestival, the Ballet of the Viennese state
Opera danced Igor Strawinski's Le Sacre du Printemps and the
string quinlet Mythos by the Austrian artist Herman Nitsch. The
choreography was created by Renato Zanella.
The focus of the ritual opus Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of
Spring, Scenes of Pagan Russia) by Igor Strawinski is the
sacrifice of a young girl for the solar god Yarilo to simulate
the rebirth of spring. As charming as the first sun rays, as
mystical-violent as the cultic dances, the ritual violence of
this rite of spring is also the music due to to its various
abrupt changes from fabulous moods to martial, motoric fortissimo
beats of kettledrums and strings.
"In it (Le sacre du printemps), the overcoming of the music
of the bourgeois nineteenth century is almost perfect. The music
is pure rhythm. It appears with the full intensity of a dynamic
sound, it comes out as pure music, but a Dionysian element is
added. Therefore the specific reference to the dance"
(Julius Evola, Cavalcare la Tigre)
In front of an indigo-blue background, twenty-five female and
male dancers of the Wiener Staatsopernballett were moving. Long
ropes were let down from the ceiling. Fron the stage-floor grew a
silver pyramid. Out of its top came a sepia-brown tincture. The
outstanding, perfect heavy-work of the ballet was a pairing of
violence and mysticism - the violence of music and dance and the
mysticism of the stage design - it united Kenneth Anger's Scorpio
Rising and Leni Riefenstahl's Das blaue Licht. In a brute
sequence the boys beat their indigo-blue jackets on the
stage-floor. At the end, the female dancer, incorporating the
girl that had to be sacrified, ascended the top of the pyramid to
be given to the solar god.
The deep blue of the stage design reminded of the spiritual
paintings by the Russian artist and mystic Nicholas Roerich - one
of his works is on the cover of the CD anthology Cavalcare la
Tigre released by the German label Eis und Licht about the
martial philosopher Julius Evola. Roerich, friendly with
Strawinski since 1904, was quite a lot involved in this oeuvre.
It had been his idea to create a ballet for the ancient Russian
rite of spring. For the performances he created also rhe stage
designs and the curtain as well as the colourful costumes. In
1911, both collaborated on the word-book of the work which at
that time still was called Welikaja schertwa (Great Sacrifice).
But of this word-book solely a basical division of the ballet in
two acts (day/man and night/woman) survived. At the first
performance of this atonal, mystical oeuvre in May 1913, which
created a scandal, Roerich was present. Already in April 1910 he
had mentionad the work in an interview:
"The ballet to reproduce some scenes of a sacred night of
the ancient Slavs. The ballet begins in a summer night and ends
with sunrise, with the first sun rays. The choreographic part is
bassically a ritual. It will be the first attempt to reproduce
the ancient time without an explicit story." (Nicholas
Roerich)
This ballet was followed by the string-quintet Kammer-Ton with
the work Mythos by Hermann Nitsch, Grandmaster of Red Magic and
composer of soundscapes and founder of the blood-stained Orgien
Mysterien Theater in the Lower Austrian castle Prinzendorf. The
stage design was simple. A large white cloth lay on the floor.
Behind the stage three of Nitsch's bloody paintings were hanging.
The exclusive use of the colors red and white reminded of
Japanese aesthetics - the paintings evoked the image of the red
sun-disc in the flag of Nippon. The liturgy of this ritual work
appeared with its symbolic gestures, its stylized acts like a No
theatre. The two female dancers, one dressed in scarlet, the
other one in white, wore costumes with endless long sleeves. The
five dancers - Yukio Mishima-bodies - appeared in their white
clothes like monks. Japanese-like was also the impression of
Nitsch's chamber music. Some parts reminded of the long-winded
Japanese Gagaku music. Sometimes the humming, whizzing of the
strings was too restless, too Dionysian. The Apollinian strength
of this staging - Hermann Nitsch did not participate in it - was
quite different from the usual actions of the castle owner who
has been working since 1971 in his domicile on a blood-red mash
of the Schwabing boheme of the Cosmical Circle around Alfred
Schuler and the Green Hill in Richard Wagner's Bayreuth. But at
the end of this ritual pantomime the motto changed to Let it
bleed - the No theatre suddenly contained some Butoh elements: At
a sudden the white clothes of the dancers were blood-stained,
they became relics in a miraculous way - like the relics of the
Red Messes of the Orgien Mysterien Theater.
"My first musical pieces were pure noise music. It is not
that much different today. Bu today it is more organized, as I
incorporated more experience and much more aesthetics. But the
principle of my music is that instruments create an intensive
noise, that the action intensifies the music and vice versa. Out
of this my music was created. It is a part of the reality that I
am showing with my actions and through my theatre."
(Hermann Nitsch)
Jacqueline Decter, Nicholas Roerich. Leben und Werk eines
russischen Meisters, Basel 1989
Julius Evola, Cavalcare la Tigre, Engerda 1997
KADMON
* the first publication in Descent magazine, vol.5: Death Issue,
USA, 1999
CONTACT: Hermann Nietsch, Schloss 1, A-2185 Prinzendorf, Austria
F: +43 2533 89 693
