2023-07-29 14:11:51
She stepped in for a colleague just a few weeks before the premiere: actress Valery Tscheplanowa convinced in Salzburg in the title role of Lessing’s “Nathan the Wise”.
Hallein.
The actress Valery Tscheplanowa thrilled the audience at the Salzburg Festival in one of the most important male roles in German theater literature. In her interpretation, the title character was by Gotthold Ephraim Lessings “Nathan the wise” not a doting preacher of tolerance, but a Jew who is constantly fighting for his existence in the midst of brutal anti-Semitism.
At the premiere in Hallein near Salzburg on Friday evening, Cheplanowa was not only applauded for this achievement, but also for saving director Ulrich Rasche’s production. The actress stepped in just a few weeks before the performances began, after Judith Engel, originally intended to play Nathan, canceled at short notice due to health reasons.
Cheplanowa has both experience with classic male roles such as Franz in Schiller’s “Die Räuber” and with the renowned festival in the Austrian city of Mozart. There, the actress, who is also known from film and television, played the paramour alongside Tobias Moretti in 2019 in the traditional play “Jedermann”. A year earlier she worked in Salzburg with Rasche in his successful production of Aeschylus’ ancient drama The Perser.
The German director and set designer again relied on his machine theater for his “Nathan”. The actors marched for almost four hours on a constantly moving revolving stage and declaimed Lessing’s drama about religious tolerance between Jews, Muslims and Christians in times of the Crusades in an extremely poignant manner. With the help of light effects and Nico van Wersch’s live music, Rasche created a hypnotic, pulsating work of art.
The focus was not on effects, but on the analysis of the approximately 240-year-old text, whose exclusionary and brutal language was worked out in Rasche’s direction. In addition to Cheplanowa, Julia Windischbauer stood out as Nathan’s foster daughter Recha and Mehmet Atesci as the Knights Templar. (dpa)
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