Word: semper
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...Prince over the head with a champagne bottle, yelling "Sic semper tyrannis...
Hoch Kitsch transformed into high art, that is Architect Gottfried Semper's theater. His first opera house opened in 1841, burned down in 1869; his second design, an elaboration of the first, was supervised by his son Manfred and dedicated in 1878. A whimsical intermingling of neo-Renaissance Italian design and quasiabstract German folk-art motifs, it looks like an improbable combination of the Pitti Palace and a Pennsylvania Dutch farmhouse. Inside, its bright colors (whites, golds and reds) and intimate dimensions (only 1,300 seats) give it a light, cozy ambience. Trompe l'oeil reigns: columns that appear...
...when the new cornerstone was laid. The East German artisans were not quite starting from the ground up. After the bombardment by British and American warplanes, the building's shell was left standing, and although the interior was badly burned, some original details remained as clues to the materials Semper had used. The acoustics--vivid and unforced, warm and full-bodied--are a particular triumph. The rebuilt Semper Opera disproves the notion that acoustics are still a hit-or-miss proposition: just build a classic horseshoe of wood and plaster, and fill it with statuary and curtains, then sit back...
...though, Weber's tuneful, folkish fable became an undisguised metaphor of the new social order in the farmers' and workers' state. He illustrated the class struggle, for example, by having the villagers manhandle Prince Ottokar at the opera's conclusion. But with Honecker occupying what used to be the Semper's royal box, the impulse to political orthodoxy was undoubtedly strong...
...Siegfried Matthus, so perhaps Dresden's reputation as a home for new music will be at least partially restored. And Wolfgang Wagner, the composer's grandson who maintains the family shrine at Bayreuth, will direct a new production of Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg in December. But what the Semper needs is what the rest of Eastern Europe's houses need: the free exchange of singers, designers and directors with the West so that the art form can flower fully. The current political chill between the superpowers may not allow it, but the higher cause of culture demands...