Britten makes belated debut in East Berlin

Britten makes belated debut in East Berlin

main

norman lebrecht

November 11, 2014

Ivor Bolton is conducting Turn of the Screw at the Staatsoper on Saturday.

Remarkably, it’s the first time a Britten opera has been staged on Unter den Linden, even though the composer was much admired by the Communist regime and conducted his own War Requiem on the far side of the wall in 1968.

Maybe they thought Screw was too … spooky.

turn of the screw

 

Comments

  • Musiker says:

    Two things wrong with this:

    1) The Staatsoper is currently housed in the Schiller Theater in WEST Berlin while the house Unter den Linden is being extensively renovated. And it’s in the Schiller Theater that Turn of the Screw is being staged.

    2) The Komische Oper Berlin (in the former EAST of the city) staged A Midsummer Night’s Dream in September 2013.

    Even the most cursory fact-checking would have avoided Slipped Disc with coming up with YET ANOTHER woefully incorrect “news” headline and story.

    • Miller says:

      Harry Kupfer staged “The Turn of the Screw” at the Komische Oper in 2002, in a production that featured Gun-Brit Barkmin as the Governess. The production was revived the following year.

    • Theodore McGuiver says:

      Maybe NL meant that this was the first time a Britten opera has been staged by the Deutsche Staatsoper.

  • Gary Carpenter says:

    The Komische Oper is also on Unter den Linden. Indeed more so than the Staatsoper at the moment (as pointed out above).

  • MOST READ TODAY: