Interview with Nikolaus Bachler (Part 2)

Edit: The short--and altogether rather different--version of the interview with Klaus Bachler for Deutsche Welle can be read following this link.

Fresh from Playbill Arts, the second part of the interview with Nikolaus Bachler, GMD of the Bavarian State Opera.

	Nikolaus Bachler
	photo by Christian Kaufmann

Bachler makes the very point on the impossibility of non-interpretation which Jorge Luis Borges’ wrote about in “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”: A sentence like “History, the Mother of Truth” written in the seventeenth century means something radically different from the same penned by “a contemporary of William James.” Likewise seeing a 17th century costume means something radically different to a 18th century audience than it does to a 21st century audience.

Bachler continues:
“The discussion among a normal theater audience—I don’t mean that kind of conservative public that doesn’t want anything moving on stage—always starts when something is considered wrong about a performance. When we look back to the last 20 years, we easily can agree that the Ring of Chérau, or a Ruth Berghaus production is the equal of the opera’s subject. There is no question that kind of quality is the only way to do it. Because the rest is just putting on costumes and singing. Concert in costumes and makeup. That’s what most things are....”

Continued at Playbill Arts.