AFROL NEWS
Burkinabe architect Diébédo Francis Kèrè with German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul PHOTO/© Francis Kèrè/afrol News
Even architect Diébédo Francis Kèrè “thought it was a joke” when he was commissioned to build an opera village in the Burkinabe countryside to host the African parallel of Germany’s famous Bayreuth Festival. Not any more.
It is not the first time Mr Kèrè – born in Gando in Burkina Faso and studying architecture in Berlin – has followed and realised a crazy dream. In 1998, he founded an organisation seeking private German funds for the building of schools in Burkina Faso using local materials. A dozen of schools have already been inaugurated.
Since then, the Burkinabe architect has taken his success abroad, building schools in Yemen and India, and an international debate centre in Fuerteventura, Spain, in addition to office and conference buildings in Ouagadougou, the Burkinabe capital.
But still, when Mr Kèrè met Christoph Schlingensief (1960-2010) in January 2009, he first thought the proposals he was hearing went across the line of the possible. Mr Schlingensief was a famous German film and theatre director, actor and artist who had received a death sentence from his medics due to an advanced lung cancer diagnosis.
Mr Schlingensief had directed the Parsifal opera by Richard Wagner at the Bayreuth Festival from 2004 to 2007, and after receiving his diagnosis in 2008, he decided to create an African Bayreuth as his lasting legacy. Looking at possible location sites in Cameroon and Mozambique, he finally decided on Burkina Faso.
That is when Mr Kèrè ran into the German director and visionary. “When I was first confronted with the question of an opera house for Africa, I initially thought it was a joke. Such a fantasy could only come from somebody who either doesn’t know Africa, or who is so saturated that all he can think up is nonsense,” the Burkinabe architect recalls from his first meeting with Mr Schlingensief.
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