Eight new productions at Berlin’s 3rd opera house
mainThe Komische Oper has announced its season.
Eight new shows including Aribert Reimann’s Medea, Rameau’s seldom-staged Zoroastre and Musorgsky’s even rarer The Fair at Sorochyntsi.
The standout production will be Oscar Straus’s Cleopatra’s Pearls, a subversive work of the 1920s.
And they tell us London can only afford one fulltime opera house and a shadowy ENO.
Photo: Jan Windszus
This is what you can do if you have a talented Intendant like Barrie Kosky – not a clueless Public-School prefect from a Management Consultancy firm, who has never worked in an opera house in her entire worthless life.
^^^^^^This!!!
Agreed!! And I think that the Komische Oper Berlin should now be called Berlin’s FIRST opera house, not third: the repertoire of the other two houses for 2016/7 verges on soporific, with the possible exception of Les Huguenots at the Deutsche Oper.
Ah! Enlightenment comes. Now at last I can go and hear Rachmaninoff’s piano transcription “Hopak from Sorochintsy Fair” (Boosey & Hawkes title) live in the original!
I think it is only fair to point out that Komische gets over thirty million euros of funding per annum from the government which rather makes putting on these rarities (I have no idea how well they will do at the box office) a little easier.
It is also interesting to note that Kosky slashed the number of performances at KO when he arrived..by about half if I recall. What he did manage to do was increase the box office for each performance which makes that viable.
But it is onoy right that their significantly higher funding is noted.
Before Kosky, houses seemed to be never more than two-thirds full: nowadays the house always seems full – especially for more unusual fare (Die Soldaten) and operetta! There are certainly lots of performances – even on Mondays!
Reading about what this house is doing is usually more interesting than actually seeing something in it, the recent trashy mutilated Marschner Vampyr being a typical example.
Whereas The Magic Flute (a collaboration with British theatre group “1927”) has been an astounding success…
https://youtu.be/QNz65kYmiW8
Not everything there is directed by Kosky himself – another Faust Award-nominated show in 2014 was Fiery Angel, directed by Australian Benedict Andrews, and magnificently conducted by Henryk Nanasi
https://youtu.be/umYf4QJsRO8
Fiery angel was superb in every respect: the calibre of singer seems to have improved since Kosky arrived, and the orchestra is easily the equal of the other Berlin orchestras. The one downside of the K O theatre itself is that there many many seats from where it is difficult to see all the stage.
Yes, Fiery Angel had luxury casting, since they pushed the boat out to bring in top singers from Moscow and St P for most of the main roles – the exception being their own splendid bass Jens Larsen as the Inquisitor. But the investment paid off – the show won a nomination in the Faust Awards, and the revival (conducted by Sinaisky) sold well too.
And they tell us London can only afford one full-time opera house and a shadowy ENO.
So how many opera houses does Prague with a population of 1.25 million have, Norman?