Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Egil Törnqvist: 1932-2015
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 B & Co.
- 2 William Shakespeare, King Lear
- 3 August Strindberg, Miss Julie
- 4 August Strindberg, A Dream Play
- 5 William Shakespeare, Hamlet
- 6 Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night
- 7 Yukio Mishima, Madame de Sade
- 8 Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House
- 9 Henrik Ibsen, Peer Gynt
- 10 William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale
- 11 J.B.P. Molière, The Misanthrope
- 12 Euripides, The Bacchae
- 13 August Strindberg, The Ghost Sonata
- 14 Friedrich von Schiller, Mary Stuart
- 15 Henrik Ibsen, Ghosts
- 16 The Serious Game
- Production Data
- Bibliography
- DVD list
- Index
- Also by Egil Törnqvist
10 - William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2021
- Frontmatter
- Egil Törnqvist: 1932-2015
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 B & Co.
- 2 William Shakespeare, King Lear
- 3 August Strindberg, Miss Julie
- 4 August Strindberg, A Dream Play
- 5 William Shakespeare, Hamlet
- 6 Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night
- 7 Yukio Mishima, Madame de Sade
- 8 Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House
- 9 Henrik Ibsen, Peer Gynt
- 10 William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale
- 11 J.B.P. Molière, The Misanthrope
- 12 Euripides, The Bacchae
- 13 August Strindberg, The Ghost Sonata
- 14 Friedrich von Schiller, Mary Stuart
- 15 Henrik Ibsen, Ghosts
- 16 The Serious Game
- Production Data
- Bibliography
- DVD list
- Index
- Also by Egil Törnqvist
Summary
Already at the age of fourteen, B planned “two super-productions” for his puppet theatre: Mozart's and Schikaneder's opera The Magic Flute and Shakespeare's fairy-tale drama The Winter's Tale; both projects collapsed (B, 1994a: 3). The former was realised in 1975, when B's pioneering screen version of the opera was broadcast by Swedish Television; the latter did not materialise until 1994, when his equally pioneering version of the play was performed at the Big Stage of Dramaten.
The rehearsal period was for B extremely emotional:
It never happens that I become emotional when I am professionallycreatively involved. In the case of The Winter's Tale this principle didn't hold. Already when we were blocking […] I was violently seized by emotional tumult (B, 1994a: 38).
The reason is obvious. B's wife Ingrid, to whom he was extremely attached, was seriously ill; she died a little more than a year later. It is likely that the decision to direct The Winter's Tale with its resurrection of the dead Hermione at the end had to do with Ingrid's illness. After her death B both directly and indirectly, notably in his TV film Saraband, voiced the hope that he would reunite with her in after-life.
Commenting on the theme of The Magic Flute, B had said: “
Does Pamina still live?” The music translates the little question of the text into a big and eternal question: Does Love live? Is Love real? The answer comes quivering and hopeful: “Pa-mi-na still lives!” Love exists. Love is real in the world of man. (Mozart/Schikaneder, 1975: 34).
A closely related theme is found in The Winter's Tale, where Leontes in the latter part of the play searches for Hermione as Tamino searches for Pamina. Reminiscing about the situation when he was planning to do the play in his puppet theatre, B once remarked that “The Winter's Tale is about the death of Love, the survival of Love and the resurrection of Love. It was the resurrection that broke me” (B, 1994a: 38).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Serious GameIngmar Bergman as Stage Director, pp. 143 - 156Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2015