Innocence Unknown

This performance of the Richard Wagner opera Logengrin was filmed in high definition for the Bayreuth Festival in 2011, and features vocalists like Georg Zeppenfeld, Klaus Florian Vogt, and Anette Dasch in the leading roles.

The aristocratic families of Rossitz and Warwand, who are relatives, have started to treat each other with mistrust and hatred, since a testamentary contract has stated, that the complete goods will be inherited to the respective surviving line. At the same time the young generation is in love, how can the tender ties between Agnes of Warwand and Ottokar of Rossitz be protected? Killed by their own fathers, they lie in their blood. A radical drama about the term "family". (www.filmgalerie451.de)

Film by Hans Neuenfels.

Legendary director Hans Neuenfels once again proves his great skill with this interpretation of Mozart’s “Entführung aus dem Serail” (Abduction from the Seraglio). This extraordinary production conducted by Lothar Zagrosek, and with Catherine Naglestad, Kate Ladner and Matthias Klink in the main roles, won the Bavarian Theatre Prize in 1999 and offers a refreshingly new view of one of the most frequently played operas worldwide. Special highlight: Neuenfels places an actor at every singer’s side who not only takes over his role for the spoken original scripts, but also interacts with his singing double and other characters of the piece. In recent decades, directors have sought to revitalise the somewhat naive plot of the “Entführung” with fresh interpretations. Hans Neuenfels, who produced his “first Mozart” here in Stuttgart, retains the story’s naivety and absurdity. He does this in a very stimulating and intelligent way.

An imaginary biography of Jean Genet, poet and high priest of evil. "Revolt is something I allow myself", said Jean Genet in 1975. Born in Paris in 1910, raised and humiliated in an approved school, a pederast and thief who has been to prison 14 times and expelled from five European countries. His novels are ballads of poisonous beauty, his plays are murky rituals of oppression where each person acts out the role imposed upon him by the others.

The film interweaves three layers: the centre is Kleist's play "Penthesilea". Like from a distance Kleist observes the relationship beween man and woman, when he transfers into mythical Greece what in his time became a problem for him in Prussia - and remains to be a problem also for us. The director's associations during the work form the second layer. Reality and fantasy blend to an imaginary biography of Kleist, the third layer. At the end of the film Kleist is identical with his title character Penthesilesa. (www.filmgalerie451.de)