With simultaneous projection of Les Noces by Oskar Schlemmer

In the summer of 1927 Oskar Schlemmer (1888 - 1943) together with the conductor Hermann Scherchen conceived a project for Les Noces by Igor Stravinsky in Ascona on Lake Maggiore. Their idea was for a performance concertante with the musicians and singers on stage, and with scenes by Oskar Schlemmer projected, based on the original version with Russian texts. Oskar Schlemmer contacted Zeiss Jena for the development of a special projector and planned to hand colour black and white slides of his set designs.

Back at the Bauhaus in Dessau, Oskar Schlemmer painted the stage sets in bright tempera colours on horizontal panels of black carton. Concerts with the projections were planned for early 1928 in Berlin and Leipzig and would have been the first concert of Les Noces in Germany. Although Scherchen liked and approved the sets, the project was never realised and the idea abandoned.

The Schlemmer family saved these and many other works of Oskar Schlemmer during German Fascism and World War II from confiscation and destruction. The works for Les Noces were rolled and kept in an attic. In 1981 Oskar Schlemmer's wife gave them to their daughter Jaïna. She had the long roles with the well-preserved designs for Les Noces mounted and framed. And in 1988, to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Oskar Schlemmer, they were exhibited for the first time in museums in Lugano and Frankfurt a. M. and a catalogue was published.

Last spring the Settimane Musicali di Stresa e del Lago Maggiore contacted C. Raman Schlemmer, with the intention at last of realising the project that his grandfather and Hermann Scherchen had envisioned. The concert had been programmed for the 4th of September, which is by chance the birthday of Oskar Schlemmer - an auspicious date. The Schlmmers agreed spontaneously to a multivisual production, with the most current state of the art technology.

Thus 77 years after the idea was born on the same lake further north, the concert with the stage sets by Oskar Schlemmer is being performed as a première in Stresa on his 117th birthday under the patronage of the German Consulate General, Milan.