Tower of Babel, Robert Wilson's 2nd Radio Play, to premiere in April

After Monsters of Grace II, which was produced by the SWR and hr Broadcasting Services and presented as a Live Radio Play in Karlsruhe, Germany in 2013, Robert Wilson and a large team of fellow artists have created a second work for the radio. It is based on the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, and features the voices and talents of Fiona Shaw, Edith Clever, Daniel Hope, Traute Hoess, Jürgen Holtz, Inge Keller, Jonathan Meese, Cécile Brune, Stefan Kurt, Lydia Koniordou and many more. 

The story is told in just ten lines of ancient verse, yet the mythical construction and failure of the Tower of Babel has become an iconic motive in art and cultural history. Robert Wilson's radio play uses material from different periods in his career, and is influenced by an illustrous group of friends, contemporaries, colleagues and critics such as Susan Sontag, Christopher Knowles, Heiner Müller or Ted Carpenter. 

Tower of Babel will be broadcast four times in April on different German stations (click on the names to access the live streams of each station on the internet): 
April 3 at 2:05 PM on hr2kultur (Hessia)
April 10 at 6:20 PM on SWR2 (Baden-Württemberg and Southwest Germany)
April 13 at 8:05 PM on NDR Kultur (Hamburg, Bremen, Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania)
April 24 at 2:04 PM on rbb kulturradio (Berlin and Brandenburg)

Photographs: © hr/Ben Knabe and Ursula Ruppel

The Tower of Babel

I had a great time in Frankfurt recording The Tower of Babel, a new radio play for the Hessischer Rundfunk and BBC.

Greetings from La Traviata rehearsals in Linz

Rehearsals for my new production of Verdi's La Traviata have started in Linz, Austria. It is my first time working at the Linz State Theater's new Musiktheater am Volksgarten, built by Terry Pawson. It opened in 2013 with a new opera by my friend Philip Glass (Footprints of the Lost, see the New York Times article) and is currently one of the most advanced operatic stages in Europe.

La Traviata opens here on September 19 with a beautiful local cast from the Linz ensemble. In June of 2016, it will open with an international cast at the Perm Opera House and then travel to  other opera houses internationally from there. However, it will remain in repertoire at the Linz State Theater. Be sure to always check my Calendar or the La Traviata production page for dates.

Attached are a few photos from the rehearsals in Linz:

Photos by Stephanie Engeln

Workshop Sessions at Watermill 2015

I really enjoyed having over 1,000 guests from the community on the grounds of The Watermill Center last weekend for our Discover Watermill Day. It was a great day and the works shown by our 2015 summer participants were once again superb. 

Over the past three weeks, we held workshops for several new productions of mine, among others The Sandman, based on E.T.A. Hoffmann's romantic ghost story; Edda , the collection of Nordic myths and sagas from Iceland; Turandot by Puccini; Amahl and the Night Visitors by Menotti; a project with the Berlin Radio Choir; and a new opera with Paola Prestini for an unusual venue in Australia. I am enclosing a few images. Very excited to work further on all of these upcoming projects.