Schlingensief, Who Put Putrid Bunny on Bayreuth Stage, Is Dead
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Christoph Schlingensief, the German stage director who scandalized conservative Wagnerians with a rotting hare at the Bayreuth Festival, died on Aug. 21 of lung cancer, aged 49. The media-savvy provocateur had been diagnosed with the illness in early 2008.
The worm-riddled image appeared in his 2004 staging of “Parsifal,” and incensed those who thought Wagner’s epic about redemption deserved a nobler image than a dead Easter bunny.