SAY IT LOUDER!!!

SAY IT LOUDER!!!

In all seriousness, I hope the women involved in the scandal get to remain anonymous and receive the support they require. And I hope that none of the reputation of any production he’s involved in take a dive. Each work is the creativity and effort of many many people. Let’s not trash them because one guy decided to be a dick. In regards to Mononoke, I will look forward to it whether they recast him or not. Sakurai Takahiro may be a huge jerk but he truly has a talent and his voice is indisputably perfect for Kusuriuri - a character I have a very personal attachment to. On the other hand, if they do decide to recast him, I wish the new guy the very best and it will not change my decision.

I will watch the new Mononoke movie with all the excitement and love I feel for this series all these years. Because it’s a series with so much depth both narratively and historically. It holds so much work and wisdom of so many talented people that I refuse to let one person ruin it.

If the Medicine Seller saw how Takahiro Sakurai treats women, he'd feed him to a bakeneko.

Obligatory Crossover

Y’all I was gonna say maybe Midorikawa Hikaru could be a good contender for Kusuriuri. Then I remembered he literally voiced The Man in the Fox Mask.

The lore deepens

Ok so after mucking around with DeepL and replaying the scene a hundred times. Through a process I call trial, error, and rephrasing the translation to match the structure of the sentence then choosing from the synonyms to find the closest sounding words to Pia Douwes’ singing. I got what COULD POTENTIALLY be the original German lyrics of the 1992 version of Schwarzer Prinz (or as it was known then, Wie Du reprise). I don’t speak German so if anyone can correct any mistakes they found, that would be much appreciated.

Mama, wenn ich älter werde, such mir keinen Mann Alles, was mich glücklich macht, kann ich allein Träumen und Gedichte schreiben oder reiten mit dem Wind. Ich möchte nie gebunden sein

YouTube

Elisabeth - Schwarzer Prinz

Pia Douwes & Uwe KrögerFor a complete playlist of Pia in Elisabeth see: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=32B8CF02EBCE8C3F

Does anybody have the transcript of the original German lyrics of the ORIGINAL Schwarzer Prinz? The one in 1992? 🥹 Cuz I can’t seem to find it anywhere. The only one I found is the one used in the Viennese Revival which is already changed …

Oh man I can’t wait to talk about Kitsch in the next Elisabeth video 🤣

Kitsch and it's importance in the design of Elisabeth

Why does the staging and approach in the recent German-language productions fail where the original and 1st revival succeeded? It all has to do with a concept I lovingly like to call "self-aware kitschiness" (and which I would like to explore further in my professional work later on).

But first of all: what can be understood under the word kitsch? When we think of kitsch, we immediately see a lot of color, ornamentation, "outdated" styles, mild historical influence and the subtext of a distaste and an avoidance for the object we descripe as "kitsch". It's eclectic, but not in a good way in the subtext. But, when we take on kitsch as a designer, we can find out that it has amazing story telling potential and value if used well.

The original was opulent and outlandish, but it was aware of the irony the settings provide. The set is composed of purposefully used kitschy stylistic elements, be it in the historic or modern direction. On that stage, in the span of over 2 hours, we see unnaturally colorful neon lights meet historic settings and items and costumes of historical styles are covered in lamé and sequins. The show revels in it's outside opulence while showing the mirror on our present day outlook on the subject at hand. After all, when an average person is told to visualize something from the time of Elisabeth's life, they immediately think of the luxury, the shimmering gilding of the Hofburg and Schonbrunn, the Winterhalter portrait and the Romy Schneider movies. All, arguably, very sugar-coated and harmlessly romanticized.

But, as we all know, Elisabeth das musical is in the first place and deep down NOT a romance. Sure, the relationship of Elisabeth with Der Tod could be from some angles and interpretations be viewed as love, but this is first and foremost the story of a woman too complex for her antiquated world fighting her internal struggles and trying to find her place in a society that doesn't understand her.

The central theme of the show's context is personal freedom, but the secondary theme is the aforementioned kitsch, which has hidden away all the difficulties, all the hardships, wrongs and bad decisions in favor of something palatable for the general public in order to sell well. But, by kitsch being such an intergal part in the design, we as an audience can see through the artifice, see just how it works and it's up to us to do nothing and accept it, laugh at it or condemn it.

The show in it's original form wasn't afraid to critique itself and it's characters while nodding along with the viewer. In the end, it is Lucheni who tells this story and in his words, he spares no one, even though there are hints of him purposefully warping the story in his favor. This is the trial to pardon his soul after all. Yet, as soon as we see Lucheni realize there is no reason to not tell the harsh truth, since there is no reason to excuse his crime, the kitsch and opulence disappear in tune of the reprise of the song of the same name. We only see harsh dark sets on rather realistic backdrops, illuminated by starkly white lights. It's cold, but distinctly real. From that point on, it's as if we awake into an entirely new world, which has replaced the world as we knew it so far, much like what the characters on stage might have experienced after Rodolf's death and with the decline of the monarchy. It's only a natural progression the story and it's characters make.

That's why when the show started to lean into "historically more realistic" visuals (starting with the 2001 Essen production, which was the first to use the Yan Tax costume designs and not the ones by Reinhard Heinrich + started using more concrete, less artistically stylized sets), it started to lose it's depth. Don't get me wrong, the Essen production did look good, but it didn't have quite as much contextual punch to it. The visuals were appealing, but they missed that kitschy edge, that made the original staging such a storytelling tour-de-force on a visual level alone. Now, from the outside, the show looked more like a stage adaptation of the Romy Schneider movies. Nice to look at, but not offering as much food for thought as the original.

And then came the era of the productions scaling down on their sets, with the 2nd revival at first seemingly mostly doing the remaining 1st revival sets (since there are promo pictures of them in the new costumes and the old sets), but they phased them out in favor of this harsh backdrop, LCD screens and a turntable. All the remaining set pieces are minimally detailed, cold and unfeeling, which seems to me like a major visual clash with them keeping on using the romaticised historical Yan Tax costumes (except for Der Tod, but I think I already talked enough about that). And at that, it feels empty and flat. Both figuratively and visually.

TLDR: For a production of Elisabeth to work design wise, you need for it to be kitschy in a self-aware way, otherwise it won't work as well.

Anybody interested in a 1-hour-long video essay dissecting the consequences of Rondo of Love and Death in Elisabeth das Musical?