Compared with some of the other controversies Gottfried Helnwein has lived through, the dissension over the "Der Rosenkavalier" he designed for Los Angeles Opera seems like a tempest in a teekanne.
As a student in Vienna, the Austrian-born Helnwein, now 56, was kicked out of school for creating a portrait of Hitler with his own blood. Decades later, as a successful artist, he painted a Renaissance-inspired mural in which an infant Christ is greeted by three wise men -- wearing SS uniforms. The piece nearly led to a lawsuit by a soldier's widow. In the '80s, an unknown assailant slashed the throats of the children in the canvas mural; at an art festival in 2001, someone set fire to a girl's portrait.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday June 21, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 58 words Type of Material: Correction
Helnwein works -- An article on artist Gottfried Helnwein in Saturday's Calendar section referred to a work of his depicting the three wise men wearing SS uniforms as a mural. It was a painting. The article also referred to the work's having been slashed by an unknown assailant. That incident involved a different artwork, which was a mural.
Helnwein's art, curator Robert Flynn Johnson wrote of a recent San Francisco show, "is the visual equivalent of a contact sport."
His "Rosenkavalier" will receive its last performance of the season Sunday afternoon at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion (with Margaret Thompson stepping in for an indisposed Alice Coote as the love-struck young nobleman Octavian). But the criticism began even before it opened, with an ad he photographed showing two fetching young women on the verge of a kiss. The objections grew louder after audiences got a load of his whimsically grotesque vision -- including monochromatic sets and minor characters who seem inspired by Dr. Seuss -- of an opera originally set in 18th century Vienna.
Helnwein himself, it turns out, is serious, thoughtful, almost grave; his temperament and constant sunglasses suggest a Germanic Roy Orbison. He says he has no urge to shock, but he appears to find controversy sadly inevitable.
"Great music, amazing singers -- for many opera fans that is enough," he says, sitting outside his studio in downtown L.A.'s artist district. "But I believe in the idea of Gesamtkunstwerke, the art that includes all art. And that means you have visual art, you have directing, you have choreography, and of course you have the music and the singing. What makes opera such an interesting art is that everything comes together."
Some viewers have been captivated by this "Rosenkavalier," only the second opera for which Helnwein has designed the sets and costumes. Times music critic Mark Swed called the production "terrific" and described its look as "sensational." The New York Times was also enthusiastic.
