I don't expect to see a guard walking around the Hannobber State Opera, a praised middle -sized opera house in central German cities.
However, at least four security guards blended into the crowd before the premiere of the new opera “Echo 72: Munich Israel” on Saturday, a new opera on the Athlete in Israel at the 1972 Munich Olympics. I tried to investigate the audience who arrived. 。
“The biggest challenge is fear, and fear is everywhere,” Laura Berman, an artistic director of Opera, Hannover. “Fear is for everyone who participates in the project.”
The Echo 72 was first assumed in 2021, but the premiere was performed when the tension over the war in Gaza was running high in the German cultural scene. On October 7, 2023, after Hamas's brutal attack and the fatal retaliation of Israel in Gaza, many artists who criticized Israel canceled the show, pause the prize, and stopped discussions.
Berman said that the challenge of creating art in such a biased society was “huge.” Recently, the debate has become very high, so the exhibition and performance have been protested only by loosely related to the Middle East.
In this charged atmosphere, the new opera and the movie “September 5” made the same event dramatically and came out in a German movie theater this month. In addition, Germany is challenging how he remembers its history. Especially difficult.
At the center of both are the 1972 Munich Olympics Paradox. World War II and Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympics were relatively recent memories at the time, so Germany wanted to reset and present the world as a reform country. Instead, violent attacks on Israeli Jews on German soil were broadcast around the world.
On September 5, 1972, a group of Palestine in the Black September invaded the Olympic village, killing two Israeli athletes, and releasing Palestinian prisoners and left wings from Israel and German. With the expectation of being forced, the other nine people were hostile. prison. The failed attempt to release the hostage by German police ended with the death of nine athletes and police officers.
Germany is still taking responsibility. As part of the 50th anniversary commemorative in 2022, the government officially apologized for the failure of the authorities, further compensated for the victim's family and investigated the attack.
Compliance on the anniversary also urged artists to pay attention to the incident, the impact of the German memory culture, and the institutional efforts facing the Nazi of the Nazi in the country.
From the official to the culture, Roman Deininger, a reporter of the Süutschezeitung newspaper, based on Munich, co -authored a book about attacks.
Composer Michael Vert Muller and scriptist Roland Symmetphenig, September, have begun to work on the “Echo 72” year, where the recent Israel Hamas war broke out, but “September 5” is already. It was shot and edited, but the fatal development of the Middle East was already shot and edited. I cast these productions from a new perspective.
In anticipation of “Echo 72” in this context, Hannover State Opera has decided to accompany the performance in a lecture series to give viewers a historical background. Explore the origin of terrorism.
However, opera staging avoids the current dispute like a hot potato.
There is no character that directly embodies Israel athletes who have died in attacks with strict stages and eerie atonal scores. Instead, singers in black and white costumes represent the Olympic Sports instead of the national team and sang about their fields in an abstract and coded way.
The villain of the Opera is not an extremist in Palestine, which is not directly shown, but a choir of a spectator that the Stayer was a “fun house mirror” of the audience. Occasionally, those singers are dressed like modern tourists with a fancy pack and self -stick. Their costumes are similar to the German people in the Nazi era.
In an interview before the premiere, Steier said that some audience would scrutinize the Echo 72 for prejudice evidence of Israel or Palestinians. However, instead of recalling the current Middle East conflict, Steier hoped that people would reflect people in German memory culture. “Ideally, those accurate audience members may probably be part of the problem,” she said.
One of the intense scenes of the opera, the choir is greedy, as if Writhe in a glass exhibition case covered with fake blood. Steier wants to challenge the audience to recognize that “observation of atrocities as a form of entertainment is one of the things that cannot be shaken when, where, and where it shakes.” I said.
September 5 also deals with ethical dilemma unique to creating a scene from tragedy.
The film, which is completely set in ABC's Munich Olympics Studio, begins with an advertisement introducing the first live broadcast of the station from the event. When the gunshot is heard outside, a fast -paced news room drama starts. Sports reporters have noticed that they are covering the hostage crisis and are still facing relevant editing questions today. What do you call the attacker? Should I show the murder on a live TV? There is no answer in the movie.
The dilemma of “September 5” brought Hamas's attack on October 7 and the destructive bombing campaign in Gaza in Gaza, and the scene was widely shared in social media in real time. 。 But that was not the director's intention. Tim Ferbaum, who led the movie, said he had begun to study it in 2020. He added that he wanted to bring back modern audience for the first time, saying, “I had a live camera that pointed to tragedy.”
In the German movie review, we focused on today's viewers' October 7 attacks on October 7, but Fehlbaum hated talking about events in the Middle East. “For us, it's clear that this movie is about the media,” he said. He also added that the event is also an exploration of how the event complies with German memory culture.
At the beginning of the movie, Leony Benesh wants to give Germany the opportunity for the Olympics to go to Germany from the past. By the end of the movie, that hope will be shattered. “Germany failed,” she says.
Alfred Anton Freegerbauer (56), the son of a German police officer, was the son killed in a 1972 attack, and after the premiere of “Echo 72”, both opera and movies were both people. He said that he was pleased to remind the people of the events. The death of his father when he was only four years old. But he said that people wanted people to change tragic memories into something good.
Sitting in the Hannover Opera House, Freeger Bauer pulled out business cards for the recent child's Foundation in the honor of his father to support the reconciliation of different cultures, the involvement of citizens, and the recovery of trauma.
“This is performed, amplified, memorized, sad, and thought to be cool,” said Freeger Bauer, “Echo 72” and “September 5”. “But it is more important to have something new and positive.”
