Trailer – Maxi Blaha – Emilie Flöge, Beloved Muse – FESCH.TV

Trailer – Maxi Blaha – Emilie Flöge, Beloved Muse & FESCH.TV:

Penny Black (2018) for actress Maxi Blaha
Duration: 60 min
Language: German

on the centenary of the death of Gustav Klimt, 1918

Belvedere, Vienna

Emilie Flöge (1874-1952), reformist fashion designer and one of the Flöge Sisters who ran a hugely successful fashion salon; she was also life companion to Gustav Klimt and an integral part of Vienna’s fin de siècle art movement. Those are the facts, but who was Emilie Flöge really? Beloved Muse re-imagines the part of Emilie’s life that she deliberately burnt, and rescues a radical and extraordinary woman from the ashes.

The Belvedere performances were very successful. 12 evenings virtually sold out. The premiere showed that the subject of Klimt’s “Muse” is rather complex.
Worldwide Tour of BELOVED MUSE in 2018 (London, Paris, Instanbul, Australia) and 2019 (Japan)

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Maxi Blaha’s bravura solo “Emilie Flöge – Geliebte Muse” at the Palais Belvedere, Vienna, for the Klimt centenary year

…In this text written by Penny Black specifically for Maxi Blaha, Emilie Flöge wrestles with herself. She maintains she is an independent woman and successful fashion designer, which she was, and yet she still hangs lovingly onto Klimt the womaniser…. she is a business woman, a gesamtkunstwerk, an artist…The information value is just one aspect. As Flöge, Blaha is full of energy and bravura. Georg Buxhofer on bass accompanies her for the one-hour duration equally jauntily, sometimes joyously, sometimes sumptuously or sentimentally. ..The play cleverly mixes the external (both wars, the flight of her Jewish clientele following the Anschluss) and Flöge’s internal world. Heidelinde Leutgöb’s production does not superimpose any false pathos, it has wit, the right tempo, shifting moods. Bravo. DER STANDARD

First a glass of Sekt, then a walk around the newly-hung Klimt collection, and finally Maxi Blaha, sparkling in the role of Klimt’s beloved. KURIER

…Director Heidelinde Leutgöb uses this build up of tension perfectly and integrates the events into the space. For example, when Flöge stands at the window and looks down into the darkness of the park and sings of her loneliness. Or when she opens the heavy wooden doors to the exhibition halls and rolls the famous image of The Kiss into the room. (A copy, of course, the idea is great!)…Maxi Blaha reveals the many sides of this relationship. She cleverly changes the mood – from grievance to friendly memories and back again. In this way a series of sketches are created, you could call it a text collage, and it remains enthralling until the end. The idea came from Maxi Blaha, the text is by Penny Black. And not to forget Georg Buxhofer’s delicate accompaniment on the guitar. All in all, a harmonious evening.

This correspondence – including letters that Gustav Klimt sent to her – forms the basis of British writer Penny Black’s one-person show entitled “Emilie Flöge – Beloved Muse” playing in the fabulous and authentic ambience of the Marble Hall at the Upper Belvedere. Of course, at the heart of the piece is The Kiss, which Maxi Blaha, as Emilie Flöge, uses to exchange ideas with Klimt. Along the way Blaha reveals astonishing and lesser known information about the lively love life of the painter. Blaha is accompanied in this dramatized double portrait of Flöge and Klimt by a musician, Georg Buxhofer: mysterious notes from his bass guitar underpin the thoughts of this woman who viewed herself as equal to the genius painter.

Maxi Blaha was born in Vienna and is an Austrian and Australian citizen. She studied music and art at the Vienna University of Performing Arts and the Mozarteum University in Salzburg. She studied singing with Klaus Ofczarek and Althea Bridges and worked with Robert Lewis in New York. She was a long-standing member of the ensemble of the Burgtheater in Vienna, had leading engagements in the theatres of Coburg, Tuebingen in Germany, Vienna, Linz and a leading role in the „Purim Spil“ (European Capital of Culture). Her English solo works have been invited to renowned festivals and theatres in New York, London, Paris, Sydney, Auckland, Tehran, Rome, Oslo, Tokyo. Blaha starred in the international film adaptation of Arthur Miller’s „The Performance“, directed by Shira Piven, alongside Robert Carlyle and Jeremy Piven. She recently starred in the cult German crime series „Tatort“ (ORF/ARD) under Sabine Derflinger and in the film „Common Ground“ (Austrian-Israeli co-production). Blaha is currently part of the main cast of „B is for Bartleby“, a film about Herman Melville.