In the new Ulysses Theatre production, Svetozar Cvetković plays the controversial conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, and in an interview with Jutarnji list, he discusses the relationship between art and totalitarian regimes, as well as his own experiences with the Balkan wars.
Svetozar Cvetković returns to Mali Brijun, but this time in a role that, in a strange way, had been waiting for him for nearly three decades. In the new Ulysses Theatre production "Taking Sides," based on the play by British writer Ronald Harwood, he plays the great German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, a man whose artistic greatness after World War II remained inseparable from questions of his responsibility for staying in Nazi Germany.
The play is directed by Lenka Udovički, and the project is a collaboration between Ulysses Theatre and the Sarajevo War Theatre (SARTR). Opposite Cvetković's Furtwängler is American Major Steve Arnold, played by Ozren Grabarić. After the war, Arnold interrogates the conductor, trying to prove that he, whether intentionally or not, used his artistic authority to support a regime responsible for unimaginable crimes.
Harwood does not offer a verdict. Instead, he asks the audience to do exactly what the original title "Taking Sides" suggests-to take a side. Cvetković first encountered the play while managing Atelje 212, and now returns to it as an actor, recognizing in it not only a dialogue with the past but also a warning to the present.
Nearly thirty years ago, while running Atelje 212, Cvetković came across Harwood's text thanks to his acquaintance with Lenka Udovički and Rade Šerbedžija. It was only the second play he produced in his twelve years of leading the theatre. At that time, the play was directed by Udovički, with Ljuba Tadić and Petar Božović in the lead roles.
His connection with Ulysses dates back to the large regional production of "Odyssey" in 2012. Over the past fourteen years, with occasional breaks, he has also performed at Brijuni in "This Grave Is Too Small for Me," "(Pre)Faust," and "How I Learned to Drive."
Furtwängler was not a member of the Nazi Party; he helped individual persecuted musicians and clashed with parts of the regime's apparatus. At the same time, he remained the most famous conductor of the Third Reich, performing before Nazi leaders and becoming a symbol of the cultural prestige of a state that waged wars of conquest and committed genocide.
During the 1930s, some artists left Germany because they realized where it was all heading. Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, and many others refused to participate in a system that threatened aggression against the entire world. "On the other hand, you have artists who stayed. Furtwängler, because of his profession, was extremely exposed to the public," Cvetković told Jutarnji list.
The actor emphasizes that Furtwängler can be compared to Leni Riefenstahl, whose films directly contributed to Nazi propaganda, even though she simultaneously left an undeniable mark on cinematic art.
To prepare for the role, Cvetković spent months analyzing the conductor's surviving performances. "I spent months listening to his surviving recordings. Most of them are from between 1941 and 1945, during the height of the war," the actor revealed in an interview with Jutarnji list.
He poses a rhetorical question about the responsibility of all those who played music at the time: "The orchestras played then. Should we accuse them for playing? Did Beethoven's music support the fascist regime, or did it exist before it and continue to exist after it?"
It is precisely in this impossibility of a simple answer that Cvetković sees the play's strength. "As an actor, I must defend Furtwängler. I cannot step on stage and privately condemn him. I must find his reasons, his logic, and his truth," he emphasizes.
The actor draws a parallel between Furtwängler's story and his own experience in the Balkans. "For decades now, I have felt fear because in the Balkans, almost every forty or fifty years, war breaks out again. As if someone constantly has to guard us from one another," he told Jutarnji list.
He also recalled the early 1990s when he tried to warn people in Belgrade about what was coming. "We raised our voices against what we saw coming, but that voice was not heard much beyond the space where we spoke. But when tanks appeared on the streets of Belgrade, you no longer had many options," he recounted.
The Western Balkans, as he notes, has been in constant trouble since the mid-1980s. "We entered conflicts and wars, and then a post-war period for which we no longer know whether it is truly post-war or whether the war in some form is still ongoing."
Cvetković's definition of democracy goes beyond majority rule. "Democracy should mean a person's individual right to determine their own path and to have the right to their own opinion. A person must have the right to an opinion without being killed, having their head bashed in, or having their family threatened," he said in the interview with Jutarnji list.
When speaking about art, Cvetković is realistic but not disillusioned. "Art is a utopian idea. When I started doing this work, I believed that theatre could change the world. After all these years, I know it won't change the world, but it can change the mind of at least one person in the audience," he concludes.
