Favorites of the week: Very, very wonderful – culture

Exhibition in Salzburg: Photographs by Ruth Walz

Theater is an ephemeral art. Only moments can be captured. Photographer Ruth Walz is a master at it. In addition to her passion for theater and her keen eye for people in the room, she has a decisive advantage: being close to the performers. Walz is part of the family. In 1976, the now 82-year-old became the in-house photographer at the Berlin Schaubühne, which wrote history at the time, and thus became a chronicler of the time. She quit in 1990 and has followed her favorite directors everywhere ever since. Very often to Salzburg, when they stage productions there at the festival, mostly then: operas.

A selection of her images is currently under the title “Curtain up!” on view at the Rupertinum, the Salzburg Museum of Modern Art in the old town (until November 12). For example, a wall-filling scene from “Salome” by Richard Strauss in the artistic production by Romeo Castellucci with the brilliant Asmik Grigorian (2018): Like a sacrificial lamb, Salome crouches tied on a cuboid in front of the imposing walls of the Felsenreitschule and refuses the veil dance . Or, by the same director, “Herzog Blaubarts Burg” (2022), this one-act play by Béla Bartok, which Robert Wilson also staged at the 1995 festival. Once blazing, once rigid. The show enables a detailed comparison.

But it’s not just about opera and Salzburg. The eponymous curtain motif is varied in several photographs. The curtain discovers, veils and takes on a life of its own, blows and dances across the stage. The ephemeral of the stage moment – here it manifests itself in a magical way. But also in a gestural and facially detailed black-and-white image study of the opera singer Jessye Norman. Other photographs are from the Schaubühne time or privately. The choice seems very subjective. Curator Kerstin Stremmel says that Walz would also like to show her “theater family”. Small portraits of artist friends and companions, from Pierre Audi to Angela Winkler, hang on a wall in the top room.

The most beautiful room is dedicated to Bruno Ganz, who died in 2019. He was Walz’s partner. Very young and later. Sometimes with Peter Handke, sometimes with Botho Strauss. Here in close-up as Hamlet (1982), there in a series of gelatin silver prints in Prometheus Bound (1986). Very, very wonderful. moments for eternity. Christine Dossel

Comic: “Oh Cupid” by Helena Baumeister

A comic about love in the age of online dating, so original, to the point and funny that the book has won several awards, most recently at the Munich Comic Festival. Because Helena – behind it is the artist Helena Baumeister herself – longs for closeness and non-binding sex, she makes appointments with men, she likes one, she wants to see him again. The non-binding nature of the dating platforms then increasingly becomes a problem. What does Helena want? And what about her dating partner? Does someone who sleeps with each other without obligation start a relationship? In “Oh Cupid” (Avant Verlag) the feelings of the characters cannot be overlooked. For example, if Helena feels like a nervous chicken, Baumeister draws her with a chicken’s head and writes “Gackeldi Gickel”. The artist also takes the contortions when approaching literally. It’s very funny, as are the characters’ dialogues and inner monologues. Even the birds giggle, overhearing the two: “Hihihihihi, what’s going on with THEM!” Martina Knoben

Schlager concerts: “Kaisermania” in Dresden

20 years ago, the pop artist Roland Kaiser gave his first concert as part of the Dresden “Filmnächt am Elbufer”, 3,500 people came, and the evening would no longer be worth talking about if the city and the singer didn’t have every imaginable neck and neck in each other’s ears at the time fell in love and each discovered a certain lack of restraint in themselves, which has largely had free play ever since. The evening turned into a series that was already called “Kaisermania” when people weren’t yet throwing hashtags around everywhere – the 60,000 tickets for five anniversary concerts last weekend and this weekend were again reliably sold within a day. There are now more and more people in the extreme category “Ultra” among the concert-goers, which is not always a good thing, especially in Dresden. The Kaiser Ultras, like the artist himself, are peace-loving and are characterized simply by the fact that they do not attend one of his concerts, but all five. In any case, you can wish them a lot of joy and of course get well soon.

And the fun of hits doesn’t stop at the bordering building fences of one of the most beautiful concert areas. On the Kaisermania evenings, the meadow between the Carola and Augustus bridges is transformed into a small German Woodstock, and when people go home with their foldable picnic baskets more or less set on fire, the city cleaning department moves in so that the madness can start all over again the next evening. The Saxon newspaper has researched that the wide field of “mainly champagne bottles and pizza boxes” needs to be cleared, that’s all you really need to know – and yet you want to, because part of the tingling mystery of “Kaisermania” will always remain as to why this subtle one , artist Roland Kaiser, who seriously thinks about social cohesion and who is often quiet outside of his songs, has left his heart in Dresden of all places. But there is some love that you just don’t understand, and yet you can marvel at it again and again, with longing and amazement. Cornelius Pollmer

Classic CD: Handel’s “Theodora”

Some time ago, Donna Leon said in an interview that she listens to music after work. If she didn’t have to write, she would do it all the time. At the moment mainly music by George Frideric Handel, his oratorio “Theodora”, in a recording with the fabulous Italian baroque ensemble “Il Pomo d’Oro”, to which she is already very attached. Indeed, one understands Ms. Leon. The recording, directed by Maxim Emelyanychev and released on the Erato label, is a marvel of finest poetry, unearthly light and always beguilingly intimate. In terms of prominence and skill, the cast is almost grandiose folly: Lisette Oropesa, Michael Spyres, Joyce DiDonato, to name just three of the soloists. “Theodora” is not an opera, it is an oratorio of perfect beauty – supported by faith – less drama than a sad, gentle dream of love. Egbert Tholl

Youtube Show: “Colors Shows”

Open detailed view

Music by talented newcomers can now be discovered on Tiktok and in curated playlists from music streaming apps. But there are also those “Color’s X Studios”, a particularly well-curated digital stage for previously largely unknown talent. Even the aesthetics of this YouTube channel is unmistakable. Every singer stands in an empty, monochromatic space. A microphone hangs from the ceiling on a long cable. The now more than 800 videos feature musicians from all genres and countries, all extremely talented. Behind the format are two German men who initially had no contacts in the music industry. Nonetheless, her show has helped some artists to potentially crucial viral moment, including Mahalia, Goldlink or Billie Eilish, who had only 35,000 subscribers on YouTube before her “Colors Shows”. Clara Westhoff