Afterwards: Documentary “Soundtrack of Arts 3: Picasso – Artpop – Lady Gaga” – from 10.30 p.m. on ORF 2 and on ORF ON
Vienna (OTS) – The “kulturMontag” presented by Peter Schneeberger on July 15, 2024 at 10:30 p.m. on ORF 2 and on ORF ON is dedicated to the 35th birthday of the world-famous US cartoon family “The Simpsons”, which will be held as part of an exhibition on the occasion of their anniversary are guests at the Krems Caricature Museum. Also on the topic: Carl Maria von Weber’s opera “Der Freischütz”, which can be seen this year at the Bregenz Festival, which begins on July 17th. Moderator Peter Schneeberger met actor and Iffland Ring recipient Jens Harzer for one of his rare interviews. The third part of the documentary series “Soundtrack of Arts” then deals with “Picasso – Artpop – Lady Gaga” (11.30 p.m.) and thus once again the creative and fruitful interaction between music and art.
A terribly yellow family – 35 years of “The Simpsons” in the caricature museum in Krems
They are yellow, ugly, chaotic, but incredibly popular: “The Simpsons”, probably the longest-running and most successful American animated series. Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and little Maggie came into the TV world 35 years ago and, with their radical wit, are still an integral part of the global series landscape. Comic artist Matt Groening must have sweated blood and water before meeting influential TV producer James L. Brooks, who wanted him to propose animated sketches in a popular entertainment format. In times of need, legend has it, Groening invented a dysfunctional US family with googly eyes and an overbite in just 15 minutes in 1987. Since April 19th of the same year, the yellow jokers from the fictional Springfield – one of the most common place names in the USA – have been setting ratings records for Fox. The mixture of subversive humor and biting social criticism was extraordinary at the time and opened up completely new, unconventional options for television. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Soviet Union, 9/11, the rise of the Internet, smartphones, globalization, Trump, Corona or climate change – world history accompanied by a TV animation. “The Simpsons”, a mirror of society and a platform full of pop culture references. Films like “The Shining” and “The Godfather” were parodied. The list of guest appearances, the so-called cameos, is the longest in TV history, including stars such as Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor, Lady Gaga and Stephen Hawking. For the 35th anniversary, the Springfield universe is visiting the Krems Caricature Museum for the first time with the exhibition “Here Comes Bart”. For “kulturMontag” the philosopher and writer Franz Schuh and the cabaret artist and musician Paul Pizzera analyze this terribly yellow family. The latter lent his voice to Bart Simpson as a dubbing actor for some Austrian episodes.
Game on the lake – hit machine “Freischütz”
Down jackets, thick socks and gloves in midsummer? What’s going on in the country, you ask yourself in surprise, because winter has arrived on Lake Constance. Is the snow-covered landscape an expression of climate change, or a successful optical illusion? Here on the lake stage of the Bregenz Festival you fall victim to the charm of the visual without any resistance, because director Philipp Stölzl, who is also responsible for the set design for Carl Maria von Weber’s hit machine “Der Freischütz”, has transformed the setting on the water into a wintry village. The stage is the main actor and guarantor of the almost 80-year success story of the Bregenz Festival. Stölzl, who already enchanted his audience on stage with Verdi’s “Rigoletto” including a monumental head of the court jester, designed a wintry swamp landscape with bare trees and crooked houses, set after the Thirty Years’ War, entirely according to the composer’s wishes. Stölzl converted the lake between the spectator stand and stage into a playing area. From July 17th, the Wolfsschlucht will become the Wolfssee: in the center there is a 1,400 square meter pool containing 500,000 liters of Lake Constance water, which can look cloudy and then clear again in a matter of minutes with the help of a water pump. In the dark, the water basin should appear like a swampy infinity pool next to Lake Constance. Here people disappear, reappear elsewhere and there are underwater performances. The horror romance in Stölzl’s “Freischütz” is only in the literal sense; there are also fires, because after all, the devil is involved in Weber’s opera. The ORF will broadcast the opera “Der Freischütz” on July 19th at 9:20 p.m. on ORF 2. “kulturMontag” is already bringing first impressions of the spectacular production.
The Lord of the Ring – Jens Harzer in conversation
From Hamburg to Vienna, from Berlin to the Salzburg Festival – all the theaters and cultural festivals in German-speaking countries are racing around him. No wonder, as Iffland Ring recipient Jens Harzer is considered one of the most important German actors since Gert Voss left the stage. Bruno Ganz chose him as his successor to the Iffland Ring in his will in 2019. Because the most important actor award is tied to lifetime. Whoever gets it carries it to the end. Jens Harzer is a worthy heir to his colleague. The 52-year-old native of Wiesbaden is a unique phenomenon with an unmistakable tone, who only seems to find his sentences when he speaks, as if he were listening to his own thinking movements. Whether Goethe’s “Faust”, Shakespeare’s “Richard III”, Büchner’s “Woyzeck” or Dostoyevsky’s “Idiot” – his acting is always characterized by a strong physicality; in the blink of an eye he goes from humor to madness. In Austria, Jens Harzer, who is moving to the Berliner Ensemble in 2025 after 15 years at Hamburg’s Thalia Theater, is particularly well known to audiences at the Salzburg Festival. At the beginning of the 2000s he played Death in “Everyman” alongside Peter Simonischek. With Andrea Breth he worked on the stage version of Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”, a few years later he played in Dimiter Gotscheff’s premiere of Peter Handke’s “Still Storm” and impressed as Achilles alongside Sandra Hülser in Kleist’s “Shadowboxing of Relationships” by Kleist. Penthesilea”. Before he returns to the Salzach this summer with his wife and a reading of Botho Strauss’ latest, anarchic-archaic drama “Saul”, he stops off at Semmering. In lofty heights at the “Kultur.Sommer.Semmering” Jens Harzer enchants with Hölderlin’s “Hyperion” and illuminates all those universal questions about the innermost human being that still concern us today. Peter Schneeberger meets the exceptional actor for one of his rare interviews.
Documentary: “Soundtrack of Arts 3: Picasso – Artpop – Lady Gaga” (11.30 p.m.)
In the third part of Axel Fuhrmann’s “Soundtrack of Arts” series, blogger and art historian Julia Meyer-Brehm and art historian Henry Keazor once again get to the bottom of the special connection between visual art and music. What internal or external circumstances lead musicians of all genres to be influenced and inspired by the history of visual art? Famous artists and musicians such as Jay-Z, Lars Eidinger, the German hip-hop band Deichkind, the composer Detlev Glanert as well as Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga once again expose themselves in numerous video excerpts. The lyrics to rapper Jay-Z’s song “Picasso Baby” are a single piece of art-historical name-dropping: from Mark Rothko to Picasso, from Jeff Koons to Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. The musician also came up with something unusual for the accompanying music video. He adapted Marina Abramović’s world-famous performance “The Artist Is Present” from 2010 together with the artist.