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e the lack of titles if not for the comedy then at least for the new dialogue was odd if non german speakers or indeed those of us with some german who nonetheless may have struggled at times would have known anything it would surely be the musical texts the only part of the action with titles in english or german ceylan was at least respectful to the musical artists at least until the third act in which his activity involved a good deal of speaking over them melodrama i suppose one might call it but the game show element of highlighting apparen members of the audience presumably in reference in one case to that recent coldplay concert had nothing to do with die entführung even in its newly presented state that said he did what he was engaged for and largely did it well ire should be reserved for moses and her dramaturge for what the production itself was ultimately concerned with remained to me elusive very little so far as i could tell beyond this encounter love perhaps yet without any real questioning of what that might be or have been characterisation went out of the window there was some very odd direction of konstanze in martern aller arten in which she suddenly seemed turned on by the whole farrago only immediately to forget that also absent was much sense of place beyond a slightly baffling setting of much of it on a ship worst of all the set design at one point revealed an offensive caricature of a woman s eyes peering out from behind a burqa hardly ever seen in turkey then or now orientalism and let us be honest islamophobia far worse than anything in the work by twenty first let alone eighteenth century standards in her incoherent staatsoper meistersinger she arbitrarily incorporated sinister arab figures towards the close so there seems to be something of a pattern both undiscriminating and well something worse the final moral according to t shirts thrust upon actors and chorus appeared to be that everyone loved bassa selim hmmm maybe and even if true is that it there were occasional suggestions that the perennial question was its deutsch what is german we have all been there might be a theme but it was so poorly sustained and worse haplessly addressed that it would have been better left alone if you start from the smug liberal standpoint that your values more or less anti historical stand at such a level of perfection that they are all anyone has needed currently needs or will need you are unlikely to advance politically and certain not to advance dramatically to quote the unlamented kamala harris i m speaking harris s notorious refusal to acknowledge the right of protestors to be heard let alone the justice of their cause indeed points to the elephant in the room chez moses et al in a city and country that proudly flies israeli flags antisemitically described by the present federal chancellor as judenfahne from public buildings if you want a contemporary orientalist theme it is staring you in the face but that would require a little courage what we heard instead were less calls to lessing s gospel of tolerance let alone modern diversity than of self congratulation that berlin first and germany second had advanced to their current stage of enlightenment in reality moses offered no real concept beyond self congratulation and enabling sections of the audience to congratulate themselves too and strikingly little interest in or even awareness of the work the craft of actual stage direction seemed more notable for absence than presence unless clutching at straws the impression of non direction were itself a misguided aesthetic choice enough though enough did not come soon enough there were as i said aspects of the evening s entertainment truly to praise one would not hear superior mozart orchestral playing anywhere in the world one would almost certainly hear significantly worse woodwind solo playing duetting and more was exquisite beyond words much here for better or worse was beyond words the staatskapelle strings though were every bit as fine eschewing any hint of what passes today quite erroneously for period style whilst as alive and alert in the present as one could hope for unquestionably far more so than anything in the production and its presentation what cavils i had lay with sometimes fussy direction by thomas guggeis whilst there was much to admire in his contribution if not his unwillingness or perhaps inability to put his foot down in cases of the most egregious directorial intervention then he could sometimes hold the orchestra down a little too prettily moreover his participation in the contemporary fad of fortepiano commentary was alas all too predictable in nature when it was anything more than tracing an orchestral line on the keyboard in front of him it came to still less one particularly embarrassing moment excerpts from mozart elsewhere albeit with jazzy certainly not jazz like syncopation still when he conducted he mostly conducted very well and crucially let the orchestra mostly speak for itself the orchestra s twin partner in virtue the opera chorus acquitted itself well too whatever the trials presented to it onstage so too did the cast headed by a sweet toned tender belmont in siyabonga maqungo and the almost instrumentally conceived konstanze of adela zaharia once past a few balance problems early on both made their coloratura dramatically expressive insofar as moses permitted as well as musically glittering so too did the outstanding blonde of serafina starke a member of the staatsoper s international opera studio and her well matched pedrillo michael laurenz as alert to the many demands placed on him onstage as by the score david steffens s osmin was also first class surprisingly subtle again insofar as permitted there s the rub alas i suppose one might try to mount a defence rooted in the genre banished by joseph ii s theatrical reforms founded in the ideas of mozart s friend joseph von sonnenfels might we see this as a return to the world of hanswurst and especially his improvisational theatre sonnenfels s by extension joseph s objections had related to impurity of language that is it was not literary german enough dramatic triviality and extensive extemporisation that is in terms we might now employ that it did not present a dramatic work its improvisatory nature shows often only attaining literary form in their musical items also rendered it extremely difficult to censor but no my heart is not in it ultimately in any particular instance there are no rules do whatever you want a canonical if slightly precarious work will survive but make sure you know what it is you are dealing with and do it well otherwise still more than mocking the work it will mock you if only this entführung were anything like as live as it thought it was posted by mark berry at 3 47 pm email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels adela zaharia andrea moses bülent ceylan david steffens die entführung aus dem serail michael laurenz mozart serafina starke siyabonga maqungo staatskapelle berlin staatsoper unter den linden thomas guggeis wednesday 8 july 2026 pelléas et mélisande staatsoper unter den linden 3 july 2026 images tatjana dachsel from an earlier revival with a different cast golaud simon keenlyside mélisande magdalena kožená pelléas thomas blondelle geneviève anne sofie von otter arkel stephen milling yniold henrik brandstetter doctor shepherd david oštrek director ruth berghaus revival director katharina lang designs hartmut meyer staatsopernchor berlin chorus director dani juris staatskapelle berlin françois xavier roth conductor when all too briefly i lived in berlin mitte i would regularly take a short walk often mid afternoon to the dorotheenstädtischer friedhof taking their place in the firmament of great berliners buried there from fichte and hegel onwards are ruth berghaus and paul dessau director and composer in a properly brechtian line from the house next to the cemetery brecht looked down at the graves of his predecessors later joining them and being joined by helene weigel it is little exaggeration to say that berghaus saved the berliner ensemble from the mortmain of brecht s heirs only to be replaced with their connivance and that of the ruling socialist unity party berghaus s most celebrated or at least most concentrated work in opera followed that period when she worked with michael gielen in the 1980s at the frankfurt opera sadly almost nothing of her opera work survives on film but three or four productions remain in the repertoire this berlin pelléas et mélisande her delightful barber of seville also berlin tristan und isolde hamburg and possibly elektra mannheim the pelléas was seen first in 1991 conducted by none other than gielen subsequent conductors have included daniel barenboim simon rattle and now françois xavier roth this was its forty third appearance performance at the staatsoper perhaps less than one might expect for so enduring a staging compare that with over 350 for the barber but then the subtlety depth and absolute refusal to play to the gallery of debussy s opera have never appealed to sections of the operatic masses i once heard someone dismiss it as boring so much the worse for them if they would not have been converted by this then i suspect it would ever elude them after all we all have blind deaf spots the only sense in which berghaus s staging seems a little dated is perhaps in aspects of hartmut meyer s designs on reflection not so much dated as not quite of our time had i looked at them innocently i might have guessed early twenty first century rather than 1991 but they still function with great power as part of a musicodramatic whole as if roth and his cast had been involved from the outset an astonishing achievement when you think about it like her fellow directors harry kupfer now also in the dorotheenstädtischer friedhof götz friedrich across the city in zehlendorf and joachim herz in leipzig as one might expect berghaus was a student of that great adoptive berliner walter felsenstein miles away at kloser on the baltic island of hiddensee they may have departed from felsenstein in post brechtian interpretation but they all built upon his equal concern for musical and dramatic elements insofar as they may be separated at all it is perhaps no coincidence that their stagings where they survive have often proved especially enduring or perhaps it is for the sell by date of a staging stands in a complex relationship to its initial qualities nothing ultimately is forever and some wonderful things can prove ultimately ephemeral not this in any case and there must surely be something in the production as well as in the intelligence and craft of those reviving it that enables such integrated results even now one certainly notices the stark colours quasi abstract yet never cold from the outset and one soon becomes emotionally and intellectually involved in the allemonde they create the lighting for whom i can find no one directly credited is at least as important and if anything still more powerful the shadows it creates are terrifying and all will attest to the dramatic role literal and metaphorical of shadow worlds in this opera the near stratospherically vertiginuous staircase representing mélisande s tower far more directly than any more realistic attempt i have seen provides sceno dramatic focus for so much and offers terror of its own much is invested in every walk up and down every place and occasion to take a seat and the rest likewise yniold s ball a childish toy an object of motion and something to follow mélisande s ring into the menacing well her deliberate not careless tossing of that ring early on into those depths offers a rare momentary instance of lightness even humour albeit set within the ever ominous increasingly terrifying workings of fate costumes and their apparent meaning or at least amenability to be read play intriguing balancing acts a hint perhaps of the brechtian commedia dell arte we know from berliner ensemble and barber alike but turned both early french and symbolist at times pelléas and golaud appear almost interchangeable at others characters and situations win through and make their similar costumes irrelevant the role of letters their reading and their consequences becomes more concrete when they appear in large form passed from character to character and at times pinned on the wall again perhaps a brechtian inheritance but one transformed by another great artist at work there is a strong feminist element too golaud s rape of mélisande horrifying her pregnancy almost intolerably vivid without male gaze exploitation and at least as disturbing as anything else arkel s pursuit and lying with her founded in the text but extended with well nigh perfect directorial judgement the staatskapelle berlin has long experience of debussy under barenboim in particular roth s reading brought similar structural virtues and alertness to colour the later inevitably of a somewhat different nature founded in his work with period instruments on this work wisely there was no attempt merely to replicate that we can all do without ever hearing period style on modern instruments ever again but that does not mean music making like theatre cannot or should not be in a more intelligent sense historically informed timbre here played as important a structural role as anything else pointing the way forward to boulez as malevolent harmonies their progression dramatic implication and structural role led back to multiple wagner dramas throughout the playing of the staatskapelle was at least as outstanding as one could hope to hear anywhere simon keenlyside made the transition from pelléas to golaud a while ago and continues to excel in this music and its drama or should it be the other way around his triangle with thomas blondelle and magdalena kožená was as credible revealing and terrifying as any i can recall blondelle may have been indisposed yet his pelléas was fresh alert vivid and listening between the lines doomed kožená s typically intelligent artistry founded in profound communicative gifts not least in french proved almost horrifyingly moving anne sofie von otter s geneviève presided with similar intelligence and perhaps the occasional hint of her youth and its travails stephen milling s arkel was subtly yet powerfully sketched a fascinating compelling move from hunding no wonder henrik brandstetter s yniold received such warm and vigorous applause so excellent was this performance from a soloist of the tölzer knabenchor i confess i thought he must have been an adult singer successfully aping a treble even the small roles of doctor and shepherd were memorably assumed by david oštrek this then was a highly moving and thought provoking night in the theatre in itself and for the questions it posed about stagings and their aesthetics lineage and longevity i must try to see that hamburg tristan 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