Klaus Maria Brandauer
Jean Paul: Das Feuerrad einer neuen Milchstraße
('Jean Paul: The Pinwheel Galaxy of a new Milky Way')
In Flegeljahre, Jean Paul wrote that 'like a Chaos, the invisible world suddenly wanted to give birth to everything; one life form sprouted from the other, trees grew from flowers, out of these pillars of cloud, with faces and flowers breaking out of the top of these.'
Jean Paul, the poet who conceived cosmic visions, the masterful inventor of dream worlds and painter of fantastic landscapes, imagines spheres where the universe vanishes in sound and colour. His oeuvre is one and the same boundless dream in which heavenly choirs are juxtaposed with the dissonances from celestial bodies suddenly thrown off course in perfect harmony. The poet summons up the beginnings of time, when all creatures were in the process of becoming: the unsure swaying and hesitancy that gradually turned into the shapes and materials from which the way the world looks would ultimately evolve. Jean Paul's visionary images and wide-ranging thoughts are echoes of the early geological epochs that live on in myths and night-time dreams and encourage us to open our eyes to the connection between nature, humankind and the cosmos.
Klaus Maria Brandauer guides the audience through Jean Paul's stirring, flamboyant and fantastical linguistic universe. Accompanied by Arno Waschk on the piano, you can climb into the gondola with the balloonist Giannozzo and drift gently along above the world's wickedness.
Klaus Maria Brandauer is one of the few actors from the German-speaking countries to enjoy international recognition. He first rose to fame in 1981 with the Oscar-winning adaptation of Klaus Mann's Mephisto by István Szabó; this was followed by international productions such as Out of Africa and the James Bond flick Never Say Never Again as well as the Szabó films Colonel Redl and Hanussen. He won a Golden Globe and was also nominated for an Oscar for his performance in Out of Africa alongside Robert Redford.
He has been one of the most sought-after theatre actors in the German-speaking countries for decades. His title roles have included the Jedermann at the Salzburg Festival and Hamlet at the Burgtheater Wien, where he has been a cast member since 1972. The staging of Wallenstein at the Berliner Ensemble in 2007 marked the start of a highly productive collaboration with the director Peter Stein, which continued with Kleist's The Broken Jug, with Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape in Neuhardenberg and with King Lear at the Burgtheater Wien. Brandauer has also frequently directed plays and films, including Brecht's Threepenny Opera, but also Wagner's Lohengrin, as well as the movie Mario and the Magician.
After training as a pianist and conductor at the Munich and Berlin music academies, Arno Waschk studied under Ferenc Rados in Budapest. He maintains a wide repertoire as a concert pianist in the chamber music area, with a focus on 21st century music and experimental concert and performance forms. Since around 2003, he has primarily focused on conducting. He has worked for Christoph Schlingensief as the composer and arranger for Kunst und Gemüse, Mea Culpa as well as Via Intolleranza II. His debut as a director was the premiere of his musical play Der erste Amerikaner, der den Kolumbus entdeckte … at the Staatstheater Darmstadt. His compositions include theatre scores for the Burgtheater Wien or the Residenztheater in Munich, for example. 3 Episodes of Life won the Nestroy theatre prize in 2019. Arno Waschk regularly accompanies Klaus Maria Brandauer on the piano.
