The Staatsoper Berlin invited Marc Minkowski and his brilliant orchestra Les Musiciens du Louvre, for a new production of Mozart’s early work. Mozart was only 14 years old when he was commissioned to compose a large, full-length opera seria. The story of a declining king and warlord whose two very different sons love the same woman, who is also his bride, inspired Mozart to write music that knows strong passions as well as deeply felt emotions. He drew on tradition and yet already showed himself to be at a height that more than foreshadowed what was to come. The premiere at the end of 1770 became a triumph for the youthful composer. Minkowski and his incredible cast and ensemble made it again a complete showcase of all Mozart operas. The Japanese production team led by director Satoshi Miyagi immerses Mozart’s Mitridate in an enchanting ambience that lets different worlds converge. “Marc Minkowski and his brilliant orchestra Les Musiciens du Louvre […] a real coup.” (Tagesspiegel)
Götterdämmerung
Wagner’s immense imagination reveals itself in the composer’s 16-hour Ring cycle, being able to fully captivate worldwide audiences since its complete performance in 1876 in Bayreuth. Christian Thielemann’s conducting of “Velvety sound of unmatched beauty” (The Guardian) leads an extremely sophisticated production, with Tcherniakov’s stage that meets the highest technical standards, evolved in ever new, impressive spaces. “Götterdämmerung” is the concluding chapter of Wagner’s monumental four-part opus, which he conceived in the light of the revolution of 1848/49 and completed in 1874 after numerous attempts and a long interruption. In many ways, the thematic and musical threads are intertwined in a highly artistic and complex manner. “Tcherniakov, as usual, manages details on a level rarely seen in opera.” (The New York Times)
Siegfried
Thielemann/Tcherniakov Ring from Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin was a project of truly Wagnerian scale and ambition – one that captured the attention of the opera world and set new standards: “Musically, this ‘Ring’ blew away everything that had gone before – and we are talking about a performance history of more than one hundred years.” (Die Welt) In the third part of his Ring tetralogy, Wagner incorporates fairy-tale motifs into his epic mythological story. The well-known tale of “The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn Fear” is echoed in ”Siegfried” as well as episodes from the medieval “Nibelungenlied”. “One wishes for such a “Ring” all over the world.” (Kurier)
Die Walküre
Raising the curtain on a work of superlatives: the Staatsoper Unter den Linden represents the ultimate challenge for any opera house, Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen”. Christian Thielemann conducts the Ring tetralogy, and Dmitri Tcherniakov, highly praised for his psychologically sophisticated productions, led the playful all-star ensemble coherently through the panorama of characters, situations and events that unfolded like a universe and consistently interpreted the sheer vastness and the manifold twists and turns of the Ring cosmos. With the “Walküre” score, composed in the mid-1850s, Wagner reached new heights with his music, giving the orchestra remarkable communicative powers, layers of meaning were thus developed and incorporated into the work. “Enchanting magic of sound” (Die Zeit) / “A triumph for the Staatsoper” (Neue Zürcher Zeitung)
Das Rheingold
“Michael Volle’s Wotan […] is an event, […] Rolando Villazón plays a fabulous Loge.” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) A myth, a heroic epic, a family saga – perhaps all of these together – make up Richard Wagner’s Ring tetralogy. This epic production of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden sees a remarkable collaboration between Christian Thielemann , one of the most distinguished Wagner conductors of our time, and Dmitri Tcherniakov, one of the great, internationally celebrated opera directors of our time. The result is “A glittering feast of voices, sounds, ideas and precise direction of characters. Wagner at his best.” (BR Klassik) The Rheingold gives the background to the events that drive the main dramas of the whole Ring cycle. “In this Rheingold, Thielemann mastered the art of nuance and varied interpretation like no other, and without having to bank on exaggeration.” (Bachtrack.com)
Don Giovanni
This new production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin is the culminating completion of the Mozart/Da Ponte trilogy with Vincent Huguet as stage director. Huguet wants the Da Ponte trilogy to be understood as a legend of sexual liberation and its consequences, and the three operas of the cycle each tell of different phases of life. Don Giovanni about the escape of an ageing man in a world full of contradictions. Huguet sets the story of a seducer who ends up in hell for mocking his murder victim in the 1980s: Don Giovanni is a fashion photographer who uses his position of power to bed as many good-looking women as possible. The young ensemble of singers around Michael Volle as Don Giovanni, including Elsa Dreisig, Slávka Zámecníková, and David Oštrek, embrace this interpretation with immense enthusiasm. The Staatskapelle Berlin is conducted by Staatskapellmeister Thomas Guggeis. “An ensemble of young female voices who approached their roles with such freshness it was pure joy to listen to them.” (Bachtrack.com)
Turandot
Philipp Stölzl, known as award-winning cinema director (The Physician), always finds time for opera despite his many TV and cinema projects – and each time it is a very special production. He now turned to Giacomo Puccini’s last opera Turandot, which remained unfinished, because the composer could not find a twist for the final love scene that convinced him. Stölzl came up with a “a particularly intelligent perspective” (Süddeutsche Zeitung), which fascinates as much as his massive puppet moved by string, the splendid cast, or the Staatskapelle Berlin in the pit conducted by the great Zubin Mehta.
Così fan tutte
With Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden continues its acclaimed Da Ponte Cycle, designed jointly by director Vincent Huguet and conductor Daniel Barenboim. “Huguet places the action in a French-style and coherent manner in an environment that could be set either in today’s world or in the flower child world of the late 60s and 70s. In doing so, he understands Cosi as what it probably was according to the intentions of Mozart and Da Ponte. And Cosi fan tutte, which has always been thought to have a tendency to be misogynistic, suddenly shimmers in a friendlier, modern light: Is it not free love that is the problem, but the strict, outdated, basically inhuman understanding of fidelity?” (Der Tagesspiegel). Federica Lombardi, Marina Viotti, Gyula Orendt, Paolo Fanale, Barbara Frittoli, and Lucio Gallo embody their roles vocally impressively and with pleasure in the play. “The work of the young French director Vincent Huguet showed well pointed humour” (Musik heute).
Sleepless
Adapting a short story of the same title by the Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, Hungarian conductor-composer Péter Eötvös, one of the most influential figures in contemporary music, wrote Sleepless on commission. He and librettist Mari Mezei interweave snapshots of the existential search for belonging, crime as a response to human indifference and the struggle with a sense of being out of place, generating a somewhat suggestive, operatic stream of consciousness. The world premiere also marks the Staatsoper Unter den Linden debut of the Hungarian film, theatre and opera director Kornél Mundruczó, well-known for cinematically realistic works that often address contemporary social themes.
Le nozze di Figaro
Set designer Aurélie Maestre and costume designer Clémence Pernoud have moved the action of this Staatsoper Berlin production into the 80s, imbuing it with a retro ambiance that adds to the natural comedy of the opera. Throughout this adaptation of Le nozze di Figaro, stage director Vincent Huguet has an eye for more than just entertainment: the extraordinary singing and acting talent of the soloists, including the stellar Elsa Dreisig, Nadine Sierra and Emily D’Angelo, also allow him the leeway for nuanced reflections on human behavior. This already fantastic bill is topped off by the world-class Staatskapelle Berlin with the Daniel Barenboim at its helm: a sheer delight for eyes, ears, and mind! “Quirky action comedy à la Almodóvar.” Tagesspiegel