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    Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi Beliefs Seen in New Film

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    Recent access to Leni Riefenstahl’s estate has prompted new discussions in Germany about her politics and a reconsideration of her photographs of the Nuba people in Sudan.Two decades after her death, the German director Leni Riefenstahl occupies an uneasy place in film history. She directed two influential movies that are still studied for their aesthetic ambitions despite being propaganda for the Third Reich: “Triumph of the Will,” a visually striking film about the Nazi party’s 1934 rally in Nuremberg, and “Olympia,” about the 1936 Berlin Olympics.After World War II, she was declared a Nazi follower, after four denazification proceedings. Later, Riefenstahl tried to recast herself as an apolitical artist. New access to the estate of the director, who died in 2003 at 101, has prompted a debate in Germany about how to manage her political legacy — and about whether her postwar rehabilitation was based on false premises.Last week, “Riefenstahl,” a documentary by the filmmaker Andres Veiel that uses recordings and letters from the estate to argue she had willfully concealed her support for Nazism, was released in German cinemas. And at a symposium in Berlin last month, researchers presented the results of a yearslong project investigating the impact of Riefenstahl’s photography of the Nuba people in Sudan.In a video interview, Veiel said that renewed scrutiny of Riefenstahl was justified by findings in her estate, which was donated in 2018 to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin and comprises 700 boxes filled with film rolls, photographs and audio recordings, among other items.Riefenstahl welcoming Adolf Hitler in her villa in the Dahlem neighborhood of Berlin in 1937, in a contact sheet of photos taken by Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler’s official photographer.Bayerische Staatsbibliothek/BildarchivThe material “contradicts the basic perspective, her legend, that she had sold to the outside world,” he said. “Even in her old age, she believed in Nazi ideology.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Back to the Future’ to Close on Broadway, Rerouting DeLorean to Germany

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      The musical, which opened in London three years ago, is still going strong there and touring North America, while productions are planned in Japan and on a cruise ship.“Back to the Future,” a nostalgia-rich and spectacle-laden musical adaptation of the much-loved 1985 film, will end its Broadway run on Jan. 5, succumbing to the difficult economics of the commercial theater business.The show had a decent run — the first performance was on June 30, 2023, and for more than a year it grossed over $1 million most weeks — but it was costly to mount and expensive to sustain; its grosses took a dive in late summer and early fall, and although it had rebounded somewhat more recently, sales were still insufficient to justify continuing. Thus far it has been seen by 720,000 people at the Winter Garden Theater.The long-gestating show began its production life in England, and won the 2022 Olivier Award for best new musical in London’s West End, where it has been running for more than three years. It has not been so fortunate on Broadway, where it won no Tony Awards. It cost $23.5 million to capitalize, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Ultimately it did not run long enough, or make enough money each week, to defray its New York costs.But this is not the end of the line for the show. The Broadway set will move to Germany, where “Back to the Future” plans an open-ended run starting next season. The London run is ongoing, there is a North American tour now underway and productions are planned in Japan and on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship.“Back to the Future” is about a teenager who travels back in time, aided by a mad scientist with a souped-up DeLorean, and must figure out how to deal with the unintended consequences of his trip. One of the highlights of the stage production is the soaring car.The musical, directed by John Rando, features a book by Bob Gale, who wrote the movie with Robert Zemeckis; the songs are by Alan Silvestri, who wrote the film’s score, and Glen Ballard. The lead producer is Colin Ingram, a British theater producer.American critics were mostly unimpressed; in The New York Times, the chief theater critic Jesse Green wrote, “Though large, it’s less a full-scale new work than a semi-operable souvenir.”The show is the seventh musical to announce a closing date since early May, following “Lempicka,” “The Heart of Rock and Roll,” “The Who’s Tommy,” “The Notebook,” “Water for Elephants” and “Suffs.” More

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      The Holocaust’s Grandchildren Are Speaking Now

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      Toward the end of “A Real Pain,” a movie written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg coming to theaters on Nov. 1, two first cousins played by Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin approach the house in a Polish town where their recently deceased grandmother had lived before the Holocaust.Eisenberg’s character, David, the more reserved of the pair, proposes the two leave stones on the doorstep, riffing on the Jewish tradition of placing stones on graves.“She’s not buried here,” says Culkin’s cousin, Benji.“Yeah, I know, but it’s the last place she was in Poland,” says David. “It’s the last place any of us were.”The improvised remembrance, the interruption of self-awareness, the confused sense of duty — all are characteristic of how American descendants of the Holocaust’s victims two generations removed today commemorate an event that, nearly 80 years after it ended, can feel like something that still governs their lives, not to mention the lives of Jews and everyone else.This cohort is known as the third generation of Holocaust survivors, and “A Real Pain” is representative of their output. Which is to say: It is often not about the Holocaust at all. The cousins go together on an organized tour of Holocaust sites and memorials in Poland, but much of it — excepting a visit to the Majdanek concentration camp — is lighthearted. David and Benji grieve mainly not for the Holocaust but for their grandmother, who survived it. They struggle with their own problems, including the dissipation of their relationship. They question why they are even there.Jesse Eisenberg on the set of his new movie, “A Real Pain,” about the grandsons of a Holocaust survivor visiting Poland.Agata Grzybowska/Searchlight PicturesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At the Ruhrtriennale, Searching for the Sublime Among the Ruins

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      In the abandoned industrial sites that serve as the festival’s venues, our critic witnessed beauty struggling to be born: fitfully, clumsily and sometimes stunningly.“I Want Absolute Beauty,” the title of the opening production for this year’s Ruhrtriennale, sounds like a mission statement of sorts.The event, one of Germany’s major arts festivals, lights up the former industrial sites that dot the Ruhr region, in the country’s northwest — though hulking power plants and abandoned steelworks aren’t where you necessarily expect to find beauty. Then again, this 22-year-old festival has always been about letting audiences encounter the sublime among the ruins. Everywhere I turned during the Ruhrtriennale’s opening weekend, I witnessed beauty struggling — fitfully, clumsily and sometimes stunningly — to be born.This summer, the Ruhrtriennale welcomes a new artistic leader, the acclaimed Belgian theater director Ivo van Hove. His three-season tenure kicked off on Friday night with “I Want Absolute Beauty,” a staged cycle of songs by the English singer-songwriter P.J. Harvey that van Hove has created for the German actress Sandra Hüller, presented at the Jahrhunderthalle, a former power station in the city of Bochum.Hüller, best-known for her Academy Award-nominated performance in “Anatomy of a Fall,” gives gutsy and full-throated renditions of 26 of Harvey’s songs accompanied by a four-person band. It’s a heroic performance over an intermission-less hour and a half. Van Hove doesn’t impose a narrative, in the style of jukebox musicals, but a journey of sorts can be followed through the titles (“Dorset” — “London” — “New York”) that appear on a screen where both live and prerecorded video is projected throughout the evening.The stage area is covered in dirt, and dancers twirl, writhe and gyrate around Hüller. The choreography, by the collective (La)Horde, is earthy and elemental, sometimes joyous and liberating, but often menacing and with hints of sexual violence. Hüller is always front and center, her voice tough but with an edge of fragility. Sometimes she joins the dancers in their primeval thrashing. The results can be exhilarating but are just as often exasperating. Despite the high caliber of the performances, it’s easy to lose interest. Occasionally there’s an earsplitting crescendo or blinding flood light to jolt us back to attention.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Wolfgang Rihm, Prolific Contemporary Classical Music Composer, Dies at 72

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      Likened to a “court composer” for Germany, he wrote more than 500 pieces and was considered one of the most original and independent musical voices in Europe.Wolfgang Rihm, a composer whose forceful, shape-shifting output reinvigorated contemporary classical music, died on Saturday in Ettlingen, Germany. He was 72.His death, in a hospice outside the city of Karlsruhe, where he lived, was announced in a statement by his publisher, Universal Edition. It did not specify a cause, but Mr. Rihm had been treated for cancer since 2017. His illness and his efforts to compose despite it were the subject of a 2020 German documentary.Mr. Rihm was considered one of the most original and prolific musical voices in Europe and the most performed German composer of contemporary classical music. Among his prominent commissions was “Reminiszenz,” an “arresting, broody orchestral song cycle,” as Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim described it in The New York Times. The work, for a tenor and large orchestra, premiered at the 2017 opening of the Elbphilharmonie concert hall in Hamburg.Mr. Rihm composed more than 500 works, though the exact number remains unclear because some pieces have not yet been published.He received the 2003 Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, the 2010 Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the Venice Biennale and the 2014 Robert Schumann Prize for Poetry and Music, among many other awards. He was named composer in residence for the 2024-25 season at the Berlin Philharmonic.“At times he was even like a court composer” for Germany, the music critic Manuel Brug wrote in Die Welt.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Vladimir Jurowski Believes That No Artist Can Be Apolitical

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      At Munich’s prestigious opera house, the Russian-born Vladimir Jurowski has broadened the repertoire while rooting his work in political awareness.One by one, the singers came out to bow. They had just finished a performance of Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s little-known “The Passenger,” at the Bayerische Staatsoper, or Bavarian State Opera. Each received not just respectful, but also enthusiastic applause. The loudest cheers, though, were reserved for the conductor: Vladimir Jurowski.Now in his third season as the opera house’s music director, Jurowski, 52, is attracting the kind of adoration from the Munich public that was routine under Kirill Petrenko, who left in 2021 to lead the Berlin Philharmonic. But Jurowski is not merely winning over audiences; he has maintained the Bavarian State Opera’s reputation as one of the finest — if not the finest — companies in Europe while pushing its repertoire in new directions and rooting his artistry in political awareness.“We classical musicians tend to keep ourselves way from politics,” Jurowski said over lunch in March. “We always say that the music should be apolitical. Music can be, and art can be, but people who are making art should not be apolitical. At a certain point it becomes not about politics, but about ethics.”The new productions that Jurowski has led in Munich include Shostakovich’s satirical “The Nose,” directed by Kirill Serebrennikov while he was still under house arrest in Russia; Penderecki’s “The Devils of Loudun,” an allegorical tragedy about fanaticism that read in the moment as a warning against cancel culture; and Prokofiev’s “War and Peace,” staged by Dmitri Tcherniakov as an indictment of Russian nationalism after the invasion of Ukraine.When Jurowski started at the Bavarian State Opera, there were grumblings among audience members that his changes to the repertoire would come at the cost of the classics. But he has led new productions of standards like “Der Rosenkavalier,” “Così Fan Tutte” and “Die Fledermaus,” and will embark on Wagner’s “Ring” beginning this fall. And the audience hasn’t resisted: Attendance, as usual, continues to hover around 95 percent, which is extraordinary for opera.“You can try to convince people of your vision one by one in private conversations, but I think you can only persuade by the quality of the delivered product,” Jurowski said. “That’s what counts.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Aribert Reimann, Masterful German Opera Composer, Is Dead at 88

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      His works, which were radically individual, were among the most celebrated of the late 20th and early 21st century.Aribert Reimann, whose powerful operas based on works by Shakespeare, Kafka, Lorca and others made him one of the most significant opera composers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, died on Wednesday in Berlin. He was 88.His publisher, Schott Music, announced the death.A prolific composer with widely performed works, particularly his operas and songs, Mr. Reimann (pronounced RYE-mahn) was revered for his ability to fuse complex and often challenging modern music with lyrical texts. His works were frequently devastating in their emotional impact, sounding like organic expressions of the human voice.“Like few other composers of his generation, Reimann knew how to tell stories in his operas which directly affected us humans living in the 21st century,” Dietmar Schwarz, the manager of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, said in a statement.Mr. Reimann enjoyed a close relationship with the opera house. Five of his stage works were performed there, most recently his ninth and final completed opera, “L’Invisible,” which was based on texts by the Belgian Symbolist Maurice Maeterlinck and premiered in 2017.Another stage work, based on Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” was planned for 2025 but was unfinished.A performance of Mr. Reimann’s ninth and final opera, “L’Invisible,” at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 2017. Five of his works were performed at the theater.Lieberenz/Ullstein Bild, via Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Damo Suzuki, Singer Who Ignited the Experimental Band Can, Dies at 74

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      His free-spirited music ignored genre boundaries. “If you’re a creative person,” he once said, “it’s important to break rules.”Damo Suzuki, a Japanese vocalist best known for his role with the revered and influential German experimental rock group Can during its most crucial period, died on Feb. 9 at his home in Cologne, Germany. He was 74.His death was announced by Can’s label, Spoon Records. No cause was given, but Mr. Suzuki had been diagnosed with colon cancer in 2014. Initially given a 10 percent chance of recovery, he endured more than 40 surgeries in the ensuing decade.Mr. Suzuki was a free spirit who left Japan as a teenager for a nomadic life in Europe. His music ignored genre boundaries, and his singing often sounded like shamanic incantations in an invented language.“If you’re a creative person,” he said in a 2013 interview with The Japan Times, “it’s important to break rules. If you’re in the middle of the system, you can’t create much. But if you’re on the outside, you can just avoid it, start from zero and make your own stuff with no influence at all.”With Can, his enigmatic, sometimes indecipherable utterances wove through free-flowing grooves. His vocals could be as lilting as a lullaby — the Can guitarist Michael Karoli once called him a “loud whisperer” — or as startling as a shriek. In performance, while his bandmates concentrated on their instruments, Mr. Suzuki shimmied around the stage like a psychedelic imp, often barefoot and shirtless, his face hidden by an undulating mane of long black hair.Mr. Suzuki in front of his fellow members of the German band Can in Hamburg in 1971. From left: Irmin Schmidt, Jaki Liebezeit, Michael Karoli, Uli Gerlach (the band’s tour manager) and Holger Czukay.Jacques Breuer/Picture-Alliance — Deutsche Presse-Agentur, via Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More