There was a lot to see and somehow nothing. Romeo Castellucci is the Italian director of this new and highly expected production of Tannhäuser at the Munich Nationaltheater, whose history is strongly linked with the oeuvre of Richard Wagner. Romeo Castellucci showcases strong and intense pictures in a continuous but nonetheless uneasy and unclear to follow flow of symbolic acts, and in a way absorbed in the story plot. Laureate in set design and painting in Bologna, he founded the...

Wide open space on stage as the opera starts. Once more young German director Amélie Niermayer uses the overture for narrating already parts of the story. The new production of the Bavarian State Opera is her first appearance here. The first encounter of Leonor, the mistress of King Alphonse, and monk Fernand is love at first sight with immediate intimate embracing. Stage designer Alexander Müller Elmau created a dark neutral environment with some moveable metal blocks which...

It is still a rare possibility to assist to this opera, even if it was once a big success in the whole Europe after its world premiere in Paris 1835. The subject of this Grande Opera seems more than actual and modern again. It demonstrates the fight between religions, prosecution and religious discrimination, linked with the fate of two strong competing men opposed and confronted by fatal love, faith power and a virtuous girl. It is a dark story with a tragic end : dark and...

The Bavarian state opera continues its cycle of new productions of operas by Guiseppe Verdi. After Il Trovatore, Rigoletto and La Forza del Destino, it is now Un ballo in Maschera to get its new presentation, directed by the young German Johannes Erath. Being a talented musician originally, he started later to become a director and worked with Willy Decker and Peter Konwitschny. Once more, the libretto of this fine Verdi opera is rather simple, clear and straight forward. This fast...

The Center of Munich ıs currently full of antarctic fever expecting the world premiere of South Pole, an opera by young Czech composer Michael Srnka, a special order of the Bavarian State Opera. The cool, decorless big space in front of the opera house has been acoustically converted by a sound installation presenting calving glaciers, roaring whales or polar bears, icy snow storms and everything else to be heared on the coldest continent. An imitation of Amundsen's tent, installed...

The creation of Ariadne auf Naxos originally led to a novelty in music history. It was the desire to support the work of their friend Max Reinhardt that Richard Strauss and his genius librettist Hugo von Hoffmannsthal brought the intention to combine a play with a lyric opera in one piece. So, they brought together the drama by Jean Baptiste Molière Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, enriched with ballett music and the Greek tragic story of the unhappy love of Ariadne, liberated by the god...