Tag Archives: filenius

DOB Ring – Götterdämmerung

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If you have been following this saga from the beginning you have probably already concluded that Herheim’s approach is radical in some ways and very, very detail oriented.  If anything, in Götterdämmerung, it gets denser and more complex with some of the central production features used in somewhat different ways.  It’s also spectacular.  Not least because of the contributions of lighting designer Ulrich Niepel and video designer Torge Møller.  They were important contributors to the first three operas.  Here they are even more crucial.  This opera also has more going on across the full width of the stage more of the time so it’s actually much harder to film.  So let’s get into it.

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DOB Ring – Siegfried

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So continuing our look at Wagner’s Ring at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, directed by Stefan Herheim, we move on to Siegfried.  I think it’s fair to say that all the elements referred to in my introductory post are present in Siegfried with some more thrown in for good measure.  Let’s look at it act by act.

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DOB Ring – Die Walküre

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The second instalment of Deutsche Oper Berlin’s Ring directed by Stefan Herheim, Die Walküre, carries on with much the same iconography as Das Rheingold.  Once again the set is largely built up of suitcases, a crowd of refugees observes the action, there’s a piano at centre stage and a white sheet in various forms plays a key role in proceedings.  Also, much of the time the characters are working off a score of the piece.

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DOB Ring – Das Rheingold

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So here we go with the “preliminary evening” of the Deutsche Oper Berlin’s new production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen directed by Stefan Herheim.  Das Rheingold opens before the music starts with a crowd of scruffily dressed people with suitcases; presumably refugees, filling a stage which is empty except for a grand piano.  One of them starts to put on clown make up.  We will soon see that this is Alberich.  Another “refugee” sits at the piano and conjures up the first notes of the prelude from the pit.  It takes a bit longer for us to realise that this is Wotan.

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Sex and violence

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There’s a certain logic in Christof Loy following up his 2019 production of Korngold’s Das Wunder der Heliane at the Deutsche Oper Berlin with Riccardo Zandonai’s 1914 piece Francesca da Rimini. Both pieces deal with overt, somewhat perverted, sexuality as the means of a woman achieving some sort of agency and both have lush, hyper-romantic scores.  Loy claims his next project will be Shreker’s Der Schatzgräber for the same house so there’s apparently more to come.

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Frühlingsstürme

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Jaromir Weinberger’s Frühlingstürme has been called “the last operetta of the Weimar Republic”. It premiered in 1933 in Berlin with some success before being banned by the Nazis. The background is sombre enough. We are at the HQ of a Russian Army in Manchuria during the Russo-Japanese war of 1905. Against this backdrop we see two (or perhaps three) love affairs play out. Lydia Pavlovska is a widow exiled from Petersburg because of the Grand Duke Mikhailovitch’s infatuation with her. The commanding Russian general, the elderly and “good natured” Kachalov, is in love with her. She discovers that her old flame, Japanese major Ito, is operating as a spy at Kachalov’s HQ disguised as a Chinese servant. Meanwhile the general’s daughter-from-hell Tatiana has fallen for the scheming reporter from Berlin Roderich Zirbitz, who happens to be the author of a very uncomplimentary article about her father.

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Double dwarf

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The Deutsche Oper’s production of Zemlinsky’s Der Zwerg, recorded in 2019 in Berlin, is directed by Tobias Kratzer who seems to be the rising star among young German opera directors.  I can see why.  This is a thoughtful and clever production that really does have something to say without being unduly gimmicky.

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Das Wunder der Heliane

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The video recording, made at the Deutsche Oper in 2018, of Korngold’s rarely seen Das Wunder der Heliane is yet another lesson in holding off on making judgements on an opera or production until one has seen the whole thing.  I still don’t think it’s a lost masterpiece but I’m feeling a lot less derisive than I was at the end of Act I.

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