RICARDO FRAYHA
producer

Christoph Schlingensief directed Richard Wagner's The Flying Dutchman for the Amazonas Opera Festival and around Manaus. The festival director Luiz Fernando Malheiro, was the musical director. The opening of the opera festival was with a large parade of musicians, audience members, local samba schools and modified carnival floats through the city and along the Rio Negro while several parts of the opera were performed at open-air venues, with the intention to demonstrate the popular character of Wagner's music and reach and involve as many viewers as possible in the project. In addition to directing, Schlingensief's work on the staging of The Flying Dutchman
which was performed at the Teatro Amazonas, involving a large team of international and local crew and cast. The project also included the production of 18 short films which Schlingensief produced in Manaus and later presented at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. 

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CHRISTOPH SCHLINGENSIEF

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Christoph Schlingensief (Oberhausen, 1960 - Berlin, 2010) constantly challenged and transgressed boundaries in his life and art. His work included experimental and feature film, theater, opera, performance, installation, literature, TV shows, radio plays... His art anticipates, comments on and reacts to its social context, touching on topics such as German history, religion, the institution of the family and media representations of current events. His radical and provocative demand for action and reaction question what he viewed as a destructive sense of political and artistic complacency and secured his exceptional position in contemporary art. Born in Oberhausen, Germany in 1960, Schlingensief worked internationally for more than thirty years until his death in 2010. Not beholden to any one medium, Schlingensief moved between genres and disciplines dealing with political extremism and social discontentment, history and the present, combining these issues with universal questions relating to faith and superstition, truth and deception, and life and death. Whether creating films, critiquing society, establishing his own political party, building a reproduction of his childhood church, performing on stage until imprisoned by local law enforcement, founding a functioning Opera Village in Africa, or installing museum exhibitions, Schlingensief engaged deeply with his cultural and artistic milieu. He directed plays by William Shakespeare and operas by Richard Wagner, and was profoundly influenced by Joseph Beuys, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and the Viennese Actionists.

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THE FLYING DUTCHMAN

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Direction: Christoph Schlingensief | Conductor: Luiz Fernando Malheiro | Soloists: Gary Simpson, Stephen Bronk, Eiko Senda, Ricardo Tuttmann, Elaine Martorano, Martin Muehle | Actors: Karin Witt, Klaus Beyer, Koia Refkalefsky, Edenelza Sahdo, Bolinha Gonzaga, ... | Amazonas Filarmônica | Coral do Amazonas | Chorus: Maria Antonia Jiménez | Stage Design: Christoph Schlingensief, Tobias Buser | Costume Design: Aino Laberenz | Video: Kathrin Krottenthaler | Assistant Video: Marilia Halla | Lighting Design: Caetano Vilela |Assistant Lighting Design: Moises Vasconcellos | Dramaturgy: Matthias Pees, Carl Hegemann, Ricardo Muniz Fernandes | Conceptual Employees: Jörg van der Horst | Choreography: Adriana Almeida | Assistant Choreography: Iramaia Gongora | Stage Manager: Flávia Furtado | Korrepetitor: Franco Bueno | Documentation: Lennart Laberenz, Michael Truckenbrodt | Technical Direction: Julio Cesarini | Technical Production: Central tÉcnica de produção (Marcos Apolo Muniz) | Assistant Director: Anna-Sophie Mahler, Leonard Schattschneider | Trainee: Julian Pörksen; the students of HBK Braunschweig: Dorothea von Stilfried, Malte Struck, Tobias Dostal

Production: prod.art.br | Production directors: Matthias Pees, Ricardo Muniz Fernandes | Assistant producer: Ricardo Frayha | Administration: Veridiana Fernandes

Realisation: Governo do Estado de Amazonas, Secretaria de Estado de Cultura, Associação de Amigos da Cultura, Goethe-Institut São Paulo

Funding: Kulturstiftung des Bundes | Support: Haus der Kunst München, Hamburg Süd

X Festival Amazonas de Ópera

Teatro Amazonas

Manaus, AM, Brazil

20, 22 and 25/04/2007