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An opera house in Africa. With a theatre stage, cafeteria, workshops, a school, infirmary and accommodations for the artists – Christoph Schlingensief’s dream is coming true. Only two months after the decision for a plot in Burkina Faso, the laying of the foundation stone for the opera house supported by the Goethe-Institut was now celebrated near Ouagadougou. By Susanne Lettenbauer

Before the opera village, installations are needed: bright containers in the savannah sand, tidily arranged in a semicircle. They were shipped over a thousand kilometres from the Ruhr to Zinairé. Powdered by harmattan, the winter Sahara wind, they are filled with donated props from the Ruhrtriennale. Behind them lie picturesque granite blocks and a view across the African savannah. The place certainly has something.

Although he’s not an esoteric, we all have antenna in our heads, says the cheerful conceptual artist Christoph Schlingensief. Whoever has been to this sparse place has had to deal with introspection, as Schlingensief puts it. Even sacred ceremonies have been held here. The place could be called dramatic, theatrical, forceful, magical – a natural stage on which Lysander and Oberon leap from the thorny acacias. It could also just be called a dusty, dry plateau.

Surrounded by smaller and larger granite blocks, it is a good 30 kilometres or 45 minutes’ drive from Ouagadougou on an African off-road trail, past lean goats and dozing donkeys, past small, square clay houses in the same ochre colour as the thorny savannah around them. It is the home of farmers, eighty percent of whose children have never seen the inside of a school, not to mention an opera house. This is where deceleration begins, says Schlingensief.

No more talk of an African Bayreuth

It is on the semicircle, at the foot of which an endless savannah park landscape begins. Before laying the foundation stone, the village elders had to ask the town. It said yes. Now, this metal tube lies in the African earth filled with plans and drawings, the foundation stone for a dream, the guarantee of eternity for an exorbitant idea.

So, we have a stony hill for the African opera house, the opera village, as Christoph Schlingensief more modestly began calling his life project a while ago. There is no more talk of an African Bayreuth, of classical music for the natives, but instead of a home for a school with 500 pupils, equipped with African musical instruments and western film cameras. It has room for an infirmary and workshops, built according to the latest low-energy building standard.

The idea for it all has busied the conceptual artist and director Christoph Schlingensief for quite some time. He collected money during his autumn reading tour and advertised the project on talk shows and on his own website.

”The Flying Opera House” – Schlingensief in Africa

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Architect Francis Kéré, a native Burkinabé who once came to Germany on a scholarship from the Carl Duisberg Society, is bringing solar heat and collectors to the savannah – an experiment that is highly praised by the government and local population. Remdoogo, as the project is called on huge white banners for the laying of the foundation stone, is an opportunity for the people of the high plateau. Kéré’s Berlin architectural office provided an elegant blueprint and model.

Ever since his first encounter with Schlingensief, educational minister Philipp Savadogo has welcomed the unusual village project. The attending dignitaries such as the mayor of the neighbouring town of Zinairé agree with him fervidly. The women sit in the shade of the stark trees with the children, the future pupils who will someday attend school here. At a three percent population growth rate, it will not take long before the 300 places are taken in the music and film classes. There will be no grand pianos in the classrooms, at least not at first, assures Schlingensief, but later, you never know what may happen, maybe there will be, too.

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Schlingensief in Africa: “Big man, what’s the plan?”

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In his speech, impatient and overflowing, pressing and then again full of energy in spite of his illness, he stresses, as he did in the Christmas edition of Zeit’s feuilleton and in talk shows: we are stealing from Africa for our health. To learn from Africa, Federal President Horst Köhler wrote, means being able to adapt to new things. For those Mossi that understand French, it is a confirmation of the opportunities that the opera village could offer them.

Expectations are very high; the laying of the foundation stone made that clear. The first part will be standing by December, as Francis Kéré, attending along with his father, an honourable chief and his festively dressed entourage, discloses his plans. Yet, this too was important for Christoph Schlingensief in his one-hour speech: the pressure has to be taken off the project. No hasty obligations to enter into cooperation with the diverse local artists’ scene, and certainly no fixed festival programme. The first production is already in preparation in rehearsal rooms in the capital city. Via Intolleranza after Luigi Nono, a work with which Schlingensief wants to examine the theme of intolerance. It will not be a folklore club, the director promises, and it is certainly something arduous, but it is a work to at first not disturb the opera village.