June 2, 2020
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Otto Schenk has been on the stage for more than 70 years. He is tireless, for sure. He also seems to be indestructible. Maybe he’s an immortal too.
The actor, director and theater director celebrates his 90th birthday on June 12. Corona-related, however, the festival performance of “The Cherry Orchard” including celebration in the theater in Josefstadt has been canceled.
The old valet Firs in Amelie Niermeyer’s unconventional Chekhov staging is perhaps the last major role of the Josefstadt-Doyen in the theater, which he directed from 1988 to 1997. As a relic of bygone times, he is mistakenly lost again and again due to the hectic activity on stage, a ghost that is about to dematerialize.
Josefstadt director Herbert Föttinger has promised to resume the production in September and will probably pay a visit to the “Otti” on his birthday – in that attic apartment in downtown Vienna where Schenk’s impressive library (well stocked with books by or via Schenk) used to receive journalists, and where Barbara Stöckl and Klaus Eberhartinger were recently guests on the roof terrace for the ORF talk show “Stöckl.”
When asked about the cause of the injury, the host improvised with a plaster on his cheek to improvise a highly dramatic and detailed scene of his bedroom fall, which made it clear how much theatrical design power is still in this battered body.
“I am a heavy, sluggish millstone, and there have always been people who have moved this mill wheel,” Schenk once flirted with his own indolence, which could not be so bad when he looks back at around 170 productions that he has created over the course of his long career. One of those who still keep this bike going is director Michael Kreihsl.
He was recently able to persuade Schenk to play a leading role in a television film. In “Four Strings” he played a grumpy former star cellist who campaigns for a talented young Syrian who will become his student. Rough bowl, soft core – one of the typical gift rolls with which he became a favorite with the public.
Otto Schenk was born on June 12, 1930 in Vienna, the son of a notary and a salesperson and manager from Trieste. He made his stage debut in 1947 as a gendarme in Karl Schönherr’s “Karrnerleut” at the Theater der Jugend, which was then housed in Urania. During the audition at the Max Reinhardt Seminar as a piece of paper, he convinced i.a. the great Helene Thimig.
During this time he also took over the Parkring Theater with a group of like-minded theater enthusiasts and was a great success with Erich Neuberg’s production of Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”. From the cellar theaters in the mid-50s he switched to the theater in Josefstadt via the Volkstheater.
Otto Schenk’s breakthrough as a director was celebrated in 1960 with his Josefstadt production of Eugene O’Neill’s “O Wildnis!”. This was followed by Horváth productions at the Munich Kammerspiele (“Stories from the Vienna Forest”, 1966, and “Kasimir and Karoline”, 1969), directorial work at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg, at the Salzburg Festival – among others. Shakespeare’s “What You Want” (1972) and “As You Like It” (1980), as well as the Nestroy pieces “The Talisman” (1976) and “The Torn” (1982, with yourself as a hammer) – and at the castle . He only made his acting debut at the Burgtheater in 1996 when he was old in Raimund’s magic fairy tale “The Farmer as a Millionaire”.
As an opera director, Otto Schenk, who prefers to retreat to the Irrsee in Salzburg, made a world career. He already staged his first opera with Mozart’s “Magic Flute” in 1957 at the Salzburg State Theater. Schenk’s final breakthrough in this field came in 1962 with Berg’s “Lulu” at the Vienna State Opera.
At the Salzburg Festival (where he was a member of the board of directors in 1986-88), he staged e.g. the premiere of Cerhas “Baal” (1981). The new State Opera Director Bodgan Roscic keeps the legendary “Rosenkavalier” production Schenks from 1968 in the repertoire and only lets it refresh musically.
The New York Met, where Schenk made his debut in 1970 with “Fidelio” and in 2009 once again put on his “Ring des Nibelungen” (1986-88), became his second home. Here he also broke his oath to finally withdraw from directing for a collaboration with Anna Netrebko in 2006 and staged Donizetti’s “Don Pasquale”.
Schenk has played countless roles in the audience’s memory, for example as “Bockerer” (1984 in the Munich Volkstheater or 1993 in Josefstadt), as Fortunatus Wurzel in “The Farmer as a Millionaire” (Salzburg Festival, 1987), as ” Volpone ”(1989), as Salieri in Shaffers“ Amadeus ”(1991), as a magical king in“ Stories from the Vienna Woods ”(1994), as Moliere’s“ The Miser ”(1995), as Rappelkopf in Raimund’s“ Der Alpenkönig und der Misanthrope ”(Salzburg Festival, 1996), in Turrini’s“ Josef and Maria ”(1999) or as Thomas Bernhard’s“ Theater Maker ”(2006).
He is a chamber actor as well as an honorary member of the Vienna State Opera and Theater in Josefstadt, and in the 80s he also became “Citizen of Vienna”. “The art of making people laugh is given to Otto Schenk like no other. But because this laugh is connected with the secret recognition of human fallibility, people love it, ”it said in 2000 in the reason for the life’s work“ Nestroy ”. “Otto Schenk helps them to dissolve their fears for a moment when they laugh. And comfort them with their own misfortunes and weaknesses. That’s how he became Austria’s most popular actor. “
Schenk owes his popularity in Austria, who has been married to his wife Renée since 1956 and has a son with her (the conductor Konstantin, born 1957), also thanks to his lively screen presence and his numerous readings and solo evenings after the current Corona mandatory break will not be continued until autumn. With cabinet pieces such as “Die Sternstunde des Josef Bieder” (since 1992) or “Othello may not burst” (from 1990), he inscribed himself primarily as a comedian in the collective memory.
“It was not always funny,” he called a memory book, “I was never out for it to be funny. I was looking for people to believe me. ”Another book about Otto Schenk was published for his birthday. “Schenk – The Book” uses many photos by Michael Horowitz to draw “an intimate picture of life”, as the subtitle states. Schenk comes out in the book as “man-eater” and closes with a look at the inevitably coming life finale: “If I were asked if I was afraid of death, I would answer: Ask me later!”
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