The Bayreuth Festival warmly congratulate Piotr Beczała (Best Singer), Neo Rauch (Best Set Designer), and Rosa Loy (Best Costume Designer) on being honored with the OPER! AWARD 2019. *
The newly established award by the specialist magazine OPER! was presented for the first time on September 21, 2019. The founder and chairman of the jury, Dr. Ulrich Ruhnke, emphatically recalled what opera is capable of: “Because in addition to what happens on stage, that is precisely what opera and theater are primarily capable of: forming community. […] Opera has the very best prerequisites for bringing about such togetherness. And with that, an enormous responsibility. Opera houses are content producers…”
The jury justified the decision to honor Piotr Beczała, among other reasons, by stating that he “was always an artist in the very top segment of international opera singers”, but “his Bayreuth Lohengrin has made him a cult figure.”
“Vormärz and early modernism mix in her works… van Dyck and Schilda are close”, the jury said when honoring Rosa Loy. “And in Bayreuth, beauty returns with Lohengrin.”
Neo Rauch received the OPER! AWARD because, according to the jury, “the Bayreuth Lohengrin in summer 2018 offered not pure beauty, but a disturbed poetry, one that unsettles. […] The eternal fascination of illusion, which… sometimes remains enigmatic.”
On October 20, Neo Rauch will be honored with the European Culture Prize TAURUS for Fine Arts in Vienna.
* Due to absence, the congratulations are unfortunately a little “delayed”.