Urs Rechn

Last updated
Urs Rechn
Port urs rechn.jpg
Urs Rechn, February 2015
Born (1978-01-18) 18 January 1978 (age 46)
Nationality German
Occupation Actor
Years active1999-present
Known forAppearance in Son of Saul and Eight Miles High

Urs Rechn is a German actor, most famous for his appearance in the 2015 Cannes Grand Prix-winning Holocaust drama Son of Saul .

Contents

Biography

Urs Günther Rechn was born on January 18, 1978, in Halle an der Saale, then German Democratic Republic, now Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, to Günther Rechn (a renowned painter and graphic artist from East Germany) and his wife Beate Rechn, the second of their three children.

From 1987 onwards, Rechn attended the Special Grammar School for Music "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy" in Halle, where he excelled in violoncello, French horn, and singing. After the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the family relocated to Cottbus, Brandenburg, where Rechn attended the 1. Heinrich Heine Academic High School for Music and Fine Arts and the Konservatorium Cottbus, where he gained an outstanding reputation as junior conductor of the youth symphony orchestra and brass band.

Despite having received no formal previous training in acting, Rechn segued into an acting career, encouraged by the honoured and renowned East German director and impresario Christoph Schroth. He appeared on the stage plays Hamlet (1995), The Beaver Coat (1996), and Steig'in das Traumboot der Liebe (1996) and as a chorister in the opera The Magic Flute (1995) at the State Theater Cottbus.

In 1997, owing to conscription, Rechn served with the German paratrooper corps, and later in the German special forces. In the meantime, he appeared in several TV episodes thanks to an agreement with his colonel. Upon completion of the active service in 2002, Rechn attended the University of Music and Theater Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Leipzig, and graduated in 2004. He became then – and still is – a visiting scholar at this institution.

Rechn has spent most of his acting career on stage: 2003-2005 Staatsschauspiel Dresden, 2005-2007 Landestheater Tübingen, 2008-2013 Theater Chemnitz, (Chemnitz Opera) e.g.: The Seagull - Treblev; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Brick; The Merchant of Venice - Antonio; Julius Caesar - Marcus Antonius; Caligula - Caligula; A Streetcar Named Desire - Stanley Kowalski; The Threepenny Opera - Jonathan Peachum.

Rechn attracted international attention for his role of the Jewish Oberkapo Biedermann in the film Son of Saul by Hungarian director László Nemes which won the Grand Prix at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival as well as several further international awards. [1] In June 2015, Hungary announced its submission of Son of Saul as their candidate for the foreign language film Oscar at the 2016 Academy Awards. [2] On February 28, Son of Saul won the Oscar.

Filmography

TV (selection)

Cinema (selection)

Roles on stage since 2003 (selection)

Staatsschauspiel Dresden, Landestheater Tübingen, Schauspiel Chemnitz Chemnitz Opera

Awards

Related Research Articles

<i>The Threepenny Opera</i> 1928 musical play by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill

The Threepenny Opera is a German "play with music" by Bertolt Brecht, adapted from a translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann of John Gay's 18th-century English ballad opera, The Beggar's Opera, and four ballads by François Villon, with music by Kurt Weill. Although there is debate as to how much, if any, contribution Hauptmann might have made to the text, Brecht is usually listed as sole author.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Losey</span> American theatre and film director (1909–1984)

Joseph Walton Losey III was an American theatre and film director, producer, and screenwriter. Born in Wisconsin, he studied in Germany with Bertolt Brecht and then returned to the United States. Blacklisted by Hollywood in the 1950s, he moved to Europe where he made the remainder of his films, mostly in the United Kingdom. Among the most critically and commercially successful were the films with screenplays by Harold Pinter: The Servant (1963) and The Go-Between (1971).

<i>The Beggars Opera</i> 1728 ballad opera by John Gay

The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today. Ballad operas were satiric musical plays that used some of the conventions of opera, but without recitative. The lyrics of the airs in the piece are set to popular broadsheet ballads, opera arias, church hymns and folk tunes of the time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hanns Eisler</span> Austrian and German composer (1898–1962)

Hanns Eisler was a German-Austrian composer. He is best known for composing the national anthem of East Germany, for his long artistic association with Bertolt Brecht, and for the scores he wrote for films. The Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin is named after him.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georg Kaiser</span> German dramatist

Friedrich Carl Georg Kaiser, called Georg Kaiser, was a German dramatist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giorgio Strehler</span> Italian opera and theatre director (1921–1997)

Giorgio Strehler was an Italian stage director, theatre practitioner, actor and politician.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paulus Manker</span> Austrian film director and actor (born 1958)

Paulus Manker is an Austrian film director and actor, as well as an author and screenplay writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">László Nemes</span> Hungarian film director and screenwriter

László Nemes is a Hungarian film director and screenwriter. His 2015 debut feature film, Son of Saul, was screened in the main competition at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix. He is the first Hungarian director whose film has won a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. Son of Saul is the second Hungarian film to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In 2016, Nemes was a member of the main competition jury of the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.

Caspar Neher was an Austrian-German scenographer and librettist, known principally for his career-long working relationship with Bertolt Brecht.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fritz Rasp</span> German actor

Fritz Heinrich Rasp was a German film actor who appeared in more than 100 films between 1916 and 1976. His obituary in Der Spiegel described Rasp as "the German film villain in service, for over 60 years."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bertolt Brecht</span> German poet, playwright, and theatre director (1898–1956)

Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht, known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote The Threepenny Opera with Elisabeth Hauptmann & Kurt Weill and began a life-long collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler. Immersed in Marxist thought during this period, he wrote didactic Lehrstücke and became a leading theoretician of epic theatre and the Verfremdungseffekt.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Schauspiel Köln</span> Municipal drama theatre in Cologne, Germany

Schauspiel Köln is a theatre and company in Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It forms together with the Cologne Opera and other houses the Bühnen der Stadt Köln. The listed building has 830 seats in the Grand House, 120 in the locksmith and 60 in the refreshment room. In addition, the listed 'Halle Kalk' has 200 seats, it was used until closing in the summer of 2015 because of the danger of collapse. Since the 2013/14 season Depot 1 and Depot 2 have been used as interim venues during the extensive renovation of the Schauspielhaus on the site of the former Carlswerk in Schanzenstraße in Cologne-Mülheim.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samuel Finzi</span> Bulgarian-German actor

Samuel Finzi is a Bulgarian-German actor. Since his start in the late 1980s, he has hundreds of film, television, and theatrical credits. Between 1993 and 2011, he received ten acting awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dea Loher</span> German playwright and author (born 1964)

Dea Loher is a German playwright and author.

<i>Son of Saul</i> 2015 film

Son of Saul is a 2015 Hungarian historical drama film directed by László Nemes, in his feature directorial debut, and co-written by Nemes and Clara Royer. It is set in the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II, and follows a day-and-a-half in the life of Saul Ausländer, a Hungarian member of the Sonderkommando.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Degen</span> German-Israeli actor (1928–2022)

Michael Degen was a German-Israeli actor, in film and theatre, as well as a theatre director and writer.

Lotte Meyer was a German stage and screen actress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Franziska Junge</span> German actress and singer

Franziska Junge is a German actress for theatre, film, television as well as a singer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Thalheimer</span> German theatre director

Michael Thalheimer is a German theatre director.

Tilmann Köhler is a German theatre stage director who has worked with the ensembles of the Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar and the Staatsschauspiel Dresden. His broad repertoire includes classical plays and world premiered. Several of his productions have been invited to international festivals. Köhler turned to also staging operas in 2013, beginning with Handel's Teseo at the Oper Frankfurt, where he returned to direct Martin's Le Vin herbé, Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro and Zemlinsky's Der Traumgörge.

References

  1. 'Son of Saul' on Hollywoodreporter
  2. "Hungary Selects Cannes Sensation 'Son of Saul' as Foreign Language Oscar Entry". 11 June 2015.