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Staatsoper unter den Linden: A Götterdämmerung with emotions

Helmut Pitsch

Staatsoper unter den Linden: A Götterdämmerung with emotions The Ring comes to an anti-climactic end. Thanks to the singers and orchestra, it is still an evening well worth attending. Having reached the last evening of the Ring der Nibelungen, audience members are always curious as to how a stage director tackles the grand collapse of society envisaged by Richard Wagner with the reurning of the Ring to the Rhine. How will stage director and designer Dmitri Tcherniakov handle...


Staatsoper unter den Linden: A Siegfried without passion

Helmut Pitsch

Staatsoper unter den Linden: A Siegfried without passion Tcherniakov's direction presents a Siegfried without any romanticism or association to the libretto. But the music speaks a completely different language As in Rheingold and Walküre, in the third part of the Ring we still find ourselves in the E.S.C.H.E. Research Centre. That stands for Experimental Scientific Center for Human Evolution, so it has nothing to do with the eponymous ash tree in the opera. And...


Staatsoper unter den Linden: A Walküre without any allusions

Helmut Pitsch

Staatsoper unter den Linden: A Walküre without any allusions Gods are also just ordinary people in this lavish but stark production at the Staatsoper Berlin Consistently, director Dmitri Tcherniakov refuses to use any conventional props on the second evening of the new Ring der Nibelungen at the Staatsoper unter den Linden. As in Rheingold, we find ourselves in the E.S.C.H.E Research Centre - the Scientific Centre for Human Development. During the overture, a short news video...


Staatsoper unter den Linden: A Rheingold without any gold

Helmut Pitsch

RIchard Wagner Das Rheingold Staatsoper unter den Linden Berlin A Rheingold without any gold The creation of this Ring der Nibelungen production has a prologue: the planning and staging of this entire Ring with its four works lasting a total of approx. 16 hours in one season, was supposed to be a birthday present from the Staatsoper Unter den Linden to its General Music Director, Daniel Barenboim. Unfortunately, Daniel Barenboim had to step down from conducting the three Ring...


Star Performances Create a Highly Moving La bohème at the Roya...

Sam Smith

Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème of 1896, with a libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, is one of the most frequently performed operas in the world today. Originally set in 1830s Paris, it focuses on six young adults and the love that four of them find with each other amidst the most impoverished of circumstances. One couple (Marcello and Musetta) have a stormy relationship but their frequent battles prove that their love actually has staying power. Rodolfo and Mimì,...


Intolleranza 1960: The icy wind of history

Helmut Pitsch

Intolleranza 1960 at the Komische Oper Berlin The icy wind of history The first production of the 2022/23 season at the Komische Oper Berlin, and at the same time the start of the new general management by Philip Bröking and Susanne Moser, could not have been more visually spectacular: The entire auditorium was covered with endless metres of white, semi-transparent tulle.  You still remember the packaging artists Christo and Jeanne Claude? The wrapped Reichstag in Berlin...


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