Integration also has comic pages

The Turk is coming! But no, we are not here in a nightmare of a SVP politician, but in an Opera by Gioachino Rossini, premiered in 1814 at La Scala in Milan. A very funny Opera that takes its own characters just as fun as the Turkish fashion in contemporary music.

At the Zurich Opera house Jan Philipp Gloger staged the piece, and who knows: Maybe it goes in the performance, but also a bit of a SVP-nightmare. In the Zurich production, in Vivaldi's recently re-recorded the Opera "La verità in cimento", he has delivered a razor-sharp, highly musical, point analysis of society. They played in a Villa on the zürichberg, and it was not to be overlooked, that Gloger knows this Milieu.

In the Taxi to the occupied house

Finally, the now 38-year-old Director has once studied here: After three years at the renowned Institute for Applied theatre studies in Giessen, Germany, he had changed for the continuation of studies at the Zurich University of the arts. A good time it was, he says at the Meeting in the Opera house-wardrobe, "the atmosphere at the school was very open" – and the atmosphere in the city also from a theatrical point of view, interesting. Gloger remembers a Party in an occupied house to drive the guests in a Taxi is pre-to be a contrast, is permeated with his Vivaldi-staging.

Rossini's "Il turco in Italia" is playing now, not necessarily in Zurich, but in a Central European presence, a Turk moving into a rented apartment. The current references are obvious, Gloger is addressing. But still the performance should be also fun, of course: "You can make out of a Rossini Comedy, not a political Agitprop theatre."

Exactly this is teasing him to the piece: "I'm going in as a Director where it is between Comedy and tragedy bounces." Integration is not only a serious matter; in the misunderstandings between cultures leave quite a degree of Comedy to explore, "think only of the Welcome: kiss twice, thrice, or Hand?"

Because it fits perfectly that he is in the Opera with a multi – cultural Ensemble. A Argentines are the Turks, the other protagonists come from France, Mexico, Italy, Uruguay, and Canada; the choir is of international. Gloger itself is not raised in the Ruhr, Hagen, "the topic of Immigration to me is really foreign." Nevertheless, he sent, and Videos of the samples to a Turkish friend: "If the Turkish Community for the play comes to the Opera house, which would be great, then, to find that ridiculous."

So we are on the subject, the concerns of the theatre scene at the moment: diversity. For Gloger it is Central. When he started a few months ago as acting Director at the state theatre of Nuremberg, he presented an Ensemble to rate: One-quarter of the members has international roots. Easy, this quota was not reached, he says, "because these actors have to be just as good as the other". And also, because currently all the theatre you want to have. Or, Gloger is convinced, you must have: "In Nuremberg, 60 percent of children have a migration background, almost half of the population has experience with escape, internationalism, rejection." This should be reflected in the theatre, in the Opera.

Beautiful images are not enough

In the audience, it reflects far less. Not only in the Zurich Opera house, are not represented in the hall already so many nationalities on the stage or in the orchestra pit. Theatre has always been only for a portion of the population, says Gloger: "it's not about to sell to the subscriber, and to put migrants on their places." But to show that there is a question of things that might be of interest to others. And to tell the subscriber stories, "which will invite you, not to the realities of over watch". Beautiful pictures, beautiful voices, this is not enough: "from a Purely culinary Opera is, for me, public financing is not worthy of it."

With this attitude he has made in the last nine years, a steep Opera career. His third production led him to Bayreuth, where his "Flying Dutchman" mainly because of the main actor Evgeny Nikitin in the headlines came, had to leave the Green hills just before the Premiere due to a (überstochenen) swastika Tattoos. It was not his best production, says Gloger: "It lacked those Tragikomik of the characters that I put like."

Since then, he selects his operas in a targeted manner. Also the next after the "Turco in Italia" is he has to work way back in Zürich, in exactly a year: In April 2020 here, in his production of Emmerich kálmán's operetta "The Gypsy Princess" Premiere. It is also about more than just amorous turmoil: you can assume so.

Premiere of Rossini's "Il turco in Italia" in the Zurich Opera house: Sunday, 28. April, 19 Uhr.

(tages-Anzeiger.ch/Newsnet)

Created: 27.04.2019, 18:10 PM