written June 19th, 2009 · 0 comments
Image from Spiegel.de
Back in April after reading a review on Spiegel.de, I immediately bought tickets to see Shakespeares Sonette (german title) directed by Robert Wilson and music written by Rufus Wainwright in Berlin. I was totally intrigued. There was also this article published a couple weeks before the review about Rufus Wainwright’s residency at the Berliner Ensemble. I loved this quote:
“The Berlin winter is even rougher than its reputation,” he says, sighing, brandishing a few elegant, theatrical gestures of outrage. “When it gets as frigid as it was a few weeks ago, you have to worry about freezing to death. But when it’s gray and wet, the way it’s been in the last few days, you don’t have to worry about that anymore — you just want to kill yourself.”
But anyhow, back to the show! I have listed some great videos I found on YouTube of the performance. You can get a good sense of the beautiful costumes and sets and the music of course! The second link is of Rufus Wainwright singing a couple of the sonnets at the opening of the show in Berlin. The third link is him singing another sonnet, although in the actual show, the actors would have sung them. But I think it is really nice to hear Rufus’ own voice, because it fits his musical compositions so well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_LWu8flCfA&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Image from Spiegel.de
The show was moslty in German, so it was really good that I bought a program (6 euros) so that I could read the sonnets during the intermission and after the show to clarify anything I didn’t catch in German (it was hard for me especially when they were singing to understand the German). Anyhow, I really loved it, although I think it was a bit too long and my brain stopped translating at some point. But visually, the show was stunning. The female characters being played by men and vice versa was very well done and made the show that much more interesting to watch. And of course the music was great, although it too, had its better and worse moments.
My only main criticism would be that I wish the actors would have been better singers. Their voices were all differently trained and sometimes this seriously detracted from the musical compositions. Sometimes an off pitch singer would destroy the melody or the beautiful texture of the moment because their voice was not so attractive. But I don’t know, perhaps this was a conscious decision. Some more images from the Berliner Ensemble broshure:
I loved the 3 ‘women’ with red hair on the right hand side of this photo. Of course, only one was really a woman. Their appearance was so striking, and even more so when they had a costume change into completely white outfits. The tallest was wearing these HUGE possibly even 30 cm (1 foot) high platform shoes. It had a very cool effect on stage!
