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To play or not to play: A Swiss theater director comes to Israel to test the murky Wagnerian waters

From Jerusalem Post · () English

Summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

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  • Swiss theater director Milo Rau visited Israel while researching a forthcoming production of Richard Wagner’s "The Flying Dutchman" at Deutsche Oper Berlin.
  • Rau’s work often investigates exploitation, corporate crime and systemic violence, raising questions about how far art can influence political realities.

Milo Rau has built a career on entering the most complicated and uncomfortable corners of public life. The 49-year-old Swiss theater director, filmmaker, writer and festival director recently came to Israel as part of his research for a new production of Richard Wagner’s *The Flying Dutchman*.

The production will run at Deutsche Oper Berlin from October through February 2027. Rau’s visit formed part of an exploratory effort intended to establish the ideas behind the staging before rehearsals begin.

His work frequently combines theater with documentary material and other media. *Justice*, a multimedia opera that premiered at the Grand Théâtre de Genève in January 2024, used on-site video and contemporary classical music to examine neocolonial exploitation, corporate crime and systemic violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Rau also serves as artistic director of the Vienna Festival, described in the article as Europe’s largest crossover cultural event. His willingness to challenge powerful interests has drawn accusations throughout his career, but the article presents him as a determined seeker of truth who wants art to expose injustice and draw the attention of Western audiences to those affected.

That ambition reflects a broader belief in culture’s ability to produce political change, or at least ease the consequences of injustice. The article also tempers that hope with a quotation attributed to the French writer Romain Rolland, relayed by Stefan Zweig, that art can comfort individuals but cannot confront stark realities on its own.

can bring comfort to us as individuals, but it can do nothing against stark

· Romain RollandThe quotation is used to question how much political change art can achieve, although the supplied text ends before the sentence is completed.
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Originally published by Jerusalem Post. Summarized and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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