Saint Francois d'Assise ©Wilfried Hösl

Saint Francois d'Assise ©Wilfried Hösl

Saint Francois d'Assise ©Wilfried Hösl

Stage Work

when i was young i went to the theatre a lot, above all music theatre interested me greatly, from wolfgang mozart, richard wagner, richard strauss and claude debussy through to alban berg. i had wonderful musical experiences in the vienna opera. i bought cheap seats from where i could read the texts and scores. but what took place down on the stage was awful. the productions were unable to satisfy my aesthetic needs in any shape or form. they were odious. even back then i thought about realising immaculate productions, capable of meeting my very own artistic ideas and visions. i then developed my own theatre of orgies and mysteries, which moved out of the confines of a theatre building and the stage. our happening-like actionist art surpassed all that which was propagated by conservative wisdom. at the retrospective of my work held at the world expo in 1992, which was unnecessarily scandalised, director holender proposed that i produce and create the décor and setting for an opera by jules massenet, hérodiade, at the vienna state opera. bolstered by my experiences in staging the o.m. theatre i was able to fulfil the wish of my youth to put on a production. without compromising my theatre project, in the following years i was able to stage satyagraha by philip glass in st. pölten’s festival hall, renard by igor stravinsky at the vienna state opera, scenes from goethe’s faust by robert schumann at the zurich state opera and saint françois d’assise by messiaen at the bavarian state opera. these attempts at staging music theatre were an interesting foray into the old stage theatre. unfortunately i can no longer undertake such projects anymore because I need all the strength and energy I can muster for my o.m. theatre. (2018)