APRIL 6, 7PM CET: THE BLACK RIDER, with William S. Burroughs and Tom Waits, premiered March 31 , 1990: https://www.thalia-theater.de/
APRIL 11: THE MESSIAH, by Händel, arranged by Mozart, premiered January 2020, Salzburg: https://www.3sat.de/kultur/musik/der-messias-mozartwoche-2020-100.html
APRIL 12: LA TRAVIATA, by Giuseppe Verdi, premiered September 2015, Linz / June 2017, Perm: https://permopera.ru/en/
Live performance on ARTE TV with Daniel Hope, Christoph Israel, and Robert Wilson.
Recent discourse around the surge of multi-hyphenates in the creative field – of the Virgil Abloh or Kanye West professional hybrid – position the trend as the fruit of a flattened modernity. But we all know multi-hyphenates have been around for a while. Theater and visual artist Robert Wilson has consistently done it all for more than 40 years: he’s made visual art, directed and written plays and operas, convened happenings, created sculpture and lighting design, and founded and helmed the Watermill Center artistic residency program in Southampton, NY. While experimental, Wilson’s work is coherent: good theater, he believes, like good visual art, is mathematical at its core.
Wilson’s most recent project, however, is curatorial, revisiting the photographic oeuvre of the late Robert Mapplethorpe (1946 – 1989). One of the most influential, exhibited, and controversial portrait photographers of the late 20th century – and a First Amendment cause célèbre – was also Wilson’s friend and collaborator. Recently opened at Galerie Thomas Schulte in Berlin-Mitte – then swiftly closed, along with other exhibitions in the city – “Robert Mapplethorpe: Selected by Robert Wilson,” proposes a similarly structural view of the New York icon’s photographic thinking. Now, the exhibition is viewable in 3D, digitally and the show, up through May 9th, can still be visited by individuals on appointment. Fortunately, we spoke to Wilson IRL, just before mass isolation, to discuss a collaboration that remains intimate, long after Mapplethorpe’s death.
“You looking for Glamour Closet?” was not the first thing I expected to hear when I arrived to meet Robert Wilson, but it was oddly fitting. The avant-garde director occupies a singular position in the art world, and he chose to set his home, and the operational arm of his Watermill Center, not in a loft in Soho or a warehouse in Red Hook but in the no-man’s-land of the Garment District. On the 10th floor of an otherwise ordinary building, he is surrounded by objects collected over a lifetime: Han Dynasty sculptures, an ancient Burmese basket, dozens of chairs. “It’s Bob’s mind,” says his friend, the art dealer Cristina Grajales, who recently persuaded him to create a collection of glassworks, his first love (the pieces were produced by the Corning Museum). Wilson likes to say he can work anywhere (“comfort is a state of mind”), but it’s here that he gets to play Prospero, the sorcerer at the heart of a creative universe.
As Robert Mapplethorpe selected by Robert Wilson opens at Galerie Thomas Schulte, the avant-garde theatre director and designer remembers his close friend and collaborator.
Critic, photographer and artist, Hilton Als joins Kate and Medaya to discuss his debut play, Lives of the Performers, which tells the story of actress Sheryl Sutton, one of the lead actors in Robert Wilson’s ground-shattering troupe in the 1970s. Als, the former theater critic at the New Yorker, also discusses his fascination with twins, writing a play, and the role race has played in the history of the avant-garde.
The show also includes a spirited debate among the hosts about this year’s soporific Golden Globes: are woke actors enough to keep you awake?
Also, legendary film critic J Hoberman returns to explain why his favorite film of 2019, Mary Harron’s Charlie Says, was a superior take on the Manson Family saga than Quintin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Listen to the full interview here.
“Jessye Norman was one of my dearest and closest friends. She could sing also quietly, and hum so beautifully. The color of her voice was unlike any other singer. She was a brilliant spokeswoman who cared about humanity and social justice. She was a teacher who led the way. She will be forever missed. I raise my hands for her in praise for I am fortunate to have known her.”
Robert Wilson wrote this letter to Jessye Norman on September 29, 2019, after his opening of Turandot at the Canadian Opera Co. in Toronto.
Robert Wilson and Jessye Norman
Verdi’s Otello is both drama and ritual at once. Magician of the theater Robert Wilson stages the work as the latter, while Zubin Mehta conducts it as the former – in collaboration with the Berliner Philharmoniker, who continue their explorations of opera with the Indian master conductor.
More information: https://www.festspielhaus.de/en/events/verdi-otello
