Hans Neuenfels

Hans Neuenfels (; 31 May 1941 – 6 February 2022) was a German writer, poet, film producer, librettist, theatre director, opera director and theatre manager. As a director, he first focused on drama, staged at prominent houses such as the Vienna Burgtheater, and became a leading exponent of German Regietheater. From 1974, he turned to opera, looking for "the subliminal of the music and the interlinear of the texts", for "surprisingly new, sometimes even disturbingly ambivalent perspectives on the works". Neuenfels published prose and poetry already as a young man. He was influenced by meeting Max Ernst, for whom he served as secretary.

He studied drama and directing at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen from 1961 to 1964, and at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna in the 1960s, where he shaped the company's theatre in codetermination (Mitbestimmungstheater) together with intendant Peter Palitzsch. Being invited to prominent venues, such as the Burgtheater, his productions were often controversially received. He worked with well-known actors including Klaus Maria Brandauer and , directing Kleists Penthesilea at the Schillertheater in Berlin, with Trissenaar in the title role, and Shakespeare's Ein Sommernachtstraum with Bernhard Minetti also there. At the Burgtheater, he directed Kleist's Das Käthchen von Heilbronn, and at the Schauspielhaus Zürich Wedekind's Lulu. going for what he called an archaeology of the unconscious ("Archäologie des Unbewussten"). His 1998 production of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Staatsoper Stuttgart was awarded the . in a prologue, huge insects and background videos, some of them erotic, distracted attention from the singers, and during Fiordiligi's aria "", Mattila arrived onstage walking two men, in leather and chains, as if they were dogs. She called that the worst experience and said she believed Neuenfels had crossed the line.

When he returned to the festival for Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss the following year, he provoked again angry reactions and resentment.

In December 2003, his production of Mozart's Idomeneo at the Deutsche Oper Berlin included a scene in which the title character staggers on stage carrying the severed heads of Neptune, Jesus and Buddha. When the production was planned to be repeated in September 2006, then adding the head of Muhammad, the police warned that it might present a security risk, and the opera house cancelled the performances. Following protests that the opera house was engaging in self-censorship, its manager, Kirsten Harms, rescheduled those performances for December that year.

Neuenfels directed at the Bayreuth Festival first in 2010 with Wagner's Lohengrin, conducted by Andris Nelsons. This production set the opera in a laboratory and featured chorus members costumed as lab rats. The audience reaction at the premiere ranged from enthusiastic applause to irate booing. According to Der Spiegel, Neuenfels merely smiled and shrugged after taking his curtain calls.

Personal life and death While studying in Vienna, Neuenfels and Elisabeth Trissenaar met, and married. Their son, , is a cinematographer. Neuenfels wrote a novel, Isaakaros, published in 1991. A collection of his essays, Wie viel Musik braucht der Mensch? was published in 2009, and an autobiography, Das Bastardbuch, in 2011. in Berlin on 6 February 2022, at the age of 80.

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1983: Penthesilea 1983: Die Familie oder Schroffenstein , 1984: Die Schwärmer , 1988: Europa und der zweite Apfel (TV) , 1990: Das Blinde Ohr der Oper 1999: Die Entführung aus dem Serail (TV) 2001: Die Fledermaus (TV)