Otto Schenk, an actor who became a renowned director admired for traditional opera productions and criticized by proponents of a contemporary approach, died Thursday at the age of 94.
Schenk lived in Austria and his death was announced by the Vienna State Opera.
He made 31 productions there, starting with Janáček’s “Jénifa” in 1964 and ending with Janáček’s “The Cunning Little Vixen” in 2014. Several of his compositions remain in use, including a 1979 version of Johann Strauss II’s “Die Fledermaus”, which was streamed. Around the world on New Year’s Eve.
“Otto Schenk is an essential, unforgettable chapter in the history of our theatre,” Bogdan Rosic, director of the Vienna State Opera, said in a statement. “But he was also an artist who shaped the world of theater for half a century like few others. As sacred as theater was to him, he acted naturally and fearlessly based on his immense knowledge. The immense love for the singers went hand in hand with rigorous, uncompromising rehearsal work and honesty. ,
Schenk led 16 productions at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, beginning with Puccini’s “Tosca” in 1968 and ending with Donizetti’s “Don Pasquale” in 1996. His staging of Wagner’s four-act “Der Ring des Nibelungen” premiered from 1986–89 and was shown in 20 complete cycles from 1989 to 2009 and broadcast on public television in 1990. When Schenk took the curtain call after the performance of “Siegfried” on April 18, 2009, he received a standing ovation.
Their romantic, realistic staging drew designer Günther Schneider-Siemsen to create images of river, forest and mountains dominated by greens and oranges, and Rolf Langenfass’s costumes evoked the original ring of the 1876 Bayreuth Festival. This was in a way a response to Patrice Chéreau’s Centenary Ring in Bayreuth in 1976, which was set in the industrial era Ring and was interpreted by some as Marxist.
“I wanted to tell a romantic coming-of-age story, like the one starting with ‘Once Upon a Time,'” Schenck said during an interview with The Associated Press in 1989. “All the secrets of the Wagner Ring must be guessed by the audience or found by the audience.”
Born in Vienna, Schenk studied acting at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, began directing in 1953, and led his first opera, Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte”, at the State Theater in Hamburg in 1957. He continued to act and performed 237 times in Austria. Mahotsav from 1950-97 and became the head of drama there from 1986-88.
“The theater world has lost one of its greatest phenoms, an extraordinary artist, a true legend,” Markus Hinterhäuser, artistic director of the current Hamburg Festival, said in a statement.
At the Met, his stagings of Offenbach’s “Les Contes d’Hoffmann” and Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” in 1977 earned much praise, and the Met’s artistic director James Levine invited him to stage a new Ring cycle plus Wagner’s “Parsifal” in 1991. And chose to direct “Die”. “Meistersinger von Nürnberg” in 1993.
“At a time when many new productions of ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’ might be more appropriately titled ‘Der Ringling des Barnum und Bailey’, the Metropolitan Opera’s staging of Wagner’s epic votes for the notion that perhaps, Perhaps, perhaps, the composer knew best,” New York Times critic Donal Henahan wrote in 1989. “The Metropolitan’s trend-bucking project has aroused widespread skepticism, even outrage. `Traditional,’ `traditional,’ `regressive’ and `childish representation’ are some of the nice adjectives thrown around in the lobby and in print. Were … even accepting the possibility that a radical rethinking of Wagner’s works might sometimes inspire thinking about their everyday relevance, a staging that pays respect to the original Yes, there is a useful balance.
Met productions were long dominated by Schenck and Franco Zeffirelli, who had 11 stagings that premiered from 1964–98. Schenk said he doesn’t look for hidden meanings.
“Wagner gave no hint in his life as to what the ring meant,” Schenk said. “He didn’t explain.”
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