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rs 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 before it is too late posted by mark berry at 12 19 pm email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels anne sofie von otter debussy françois xavier roth henrik brandstetter magdalena kožená pelléas et mélisande ruth berghaus simon keenlyside staatsoper unter den linden stephen milling thomas blondelle tuesday 7 july 2026 munich opera festival 4 die walküre 1 july 2026 nationaltheater images monika rittershaus siegmund joachim bäckström hunding ain anger wotan nicholas brownlee sieglinde irene roberts brünnhilde miina lisa värelä fricka ekaterina gubanova helmwige dorothea herbert gerhilde julie adams ortlinde elaine gvritshvili waltraute claudia mahnke siegrune niina keitel rossweiße christina rock grimgerde natalie lewis schwertleite noa beinart loge charith pidikiti director tobias kratzer assistant director matthias piro designs rainer sellmaier lighting michael bauer video manuel braun jonas dahl janic bebi dramaturgy bettina bartz olaf roth bayerische staatsorchester vladimir jurowski conductor as a student in berlin ludwig feuerbach attended lectures from among others gwf hegel and friedrich schleiermacher far from an unusual combination but prophetic for his subsequent development as the pre eminent young hegelian philosopher of love communism although he lectured at erlangen feuerbach failed to obtain a university position an ambition rendered impossible following revelation of his authorship of the atheistic thoughts on death and immortality published anonymously in 1830 a year in which revolutions once again began to sweep europe his writings including those thoughts the essence of christianity and principles of the philosophy of the future inspired many radicals in the next wave of revolutions 1848 51 although feuerbach remaining personally aloof from revolutionary activity one of those of course was richard wagner who shortly after publication of feuerbach s thoughts had gained his first experience direct and reported of revolution inspired by events in paris leipzig and even the previously quiescent dresden the seventeen year old saxon would recall in his autobiography mein leben the world of history having come to life saxony was not spared in dresden it even came to street fighting he began to attend leipzig university lectures on philosophy and aesthetics and henceforth considered himself a fervent partisan of the revolution wagner would go on read at least all three of the feuerbach books named above and in contrast to one of his great intellectual mentors stood anything but aloof from revolutionary political activity be it in practice during the 1849 dresden upris...