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EMILIA GALOTTI. By Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Directed by Michael Thalheimer. Deutsches Theater Berlin, presented at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Harvey Theater. 14 October 2005.
Over the past five years, the German director Michael Thalheimer has won widespread acclaim and numerous awards for his minimalist productions of plays such as Molnár's Lilioin and Schnitzler's Liebelei. His staging of Lessing's 1772 tragedy Emilia Galotti marked Thalheimer's debut at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin in 2001, where it still features in the repertoire, and has been presented on tour in many foreign cities. A short run at BAM gave New York theatregoers their first opportunity to see Thalheimer's work-and a chance to experience an adventurous approach to the classics quite common in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, but still unusual in the US. They were rewarded with a stylish, resolutely non-naturalistic, and engaging production.
Lessing based Emilia Galotti on a story, told by the Roman historian Titus Livius, about a girl killed by her father when he decides that is the only way to protect her from the ruling Decemvir. In Lessing's play it is a Prince, Hettore Gonzaga, whose desire for the middle-class girl Emilia Galotti threatens her virtue. The two meet briefly but fatefully in church, only a few days before she is due to marry Count Appiani. The Prince asks his chamberlain to help him get the wedding postponed, but Marinelli goes much further than his master intended, and...