Claus Guth’s staging of Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa was one of the first artistic casualties of COVID-19. It was set to appear at the Royal Opera House in March 2020, but it never did so because the pandemic led to the venue’s closure. It finally premiered in September 2021, and proved to be well worth the wait. If anything, this first revival of the production, by Oliver Platt, is even more accomplished than the initial outing, thanks to the strength of both...

The chorus sings its last phrase, the mysterious and enigmatic "Erlösung dem Erlöser" (Redemption to the redeemer) while greeting a Parsifal dressed more or less like a fascist dictator. Kundry, the Jewess, does not expire placidly after being baptized but, alarmed by what she sees and, above all, by what she foresees, she packs her bags and goes into exile, the curtain falls. The question is obvious: And now who will redeem us from Parsifal? Thus ends the Parsifal...

Jenůfa, which premiered in Brno in 1904, is an opera in three acts by Leoš Janáček to a Czech libretto by the composer. It is based on the play Její pastorkyňa by Gabriela Preissová, and is one of the very first operas to be written in prose. Set in a Moravian village in the nineteenth century, the plot concerns a series of tangled relationships that derive from the fact that two fathers both married twice, and had a child by three of their four...

With some notable exceptions, the most eminent of which is Beethoven’s Fidelio, the theme of maintaining marital loyalty, whilst morally so commendable, is theatrically utterly boring. Its opposite, instead, always affords interesting theatrical shambles which can range from the vaudeville to tragedy and everything in between. If Händel’s Rodelinda, a story about staunch marital loyalty, theatrically is not only tolerable but works rather well is because deep down it...

Claus Guth created this production of Strauss/Hofmannsthal’s The Woman without Shadow (Die Frau ohne Schatten) 2013 for La Scala. After later shown at Covent Garden, London it is now being staged at the Berlin State Opera as part of the Easter Festival 2017, scenic rehearsal by Julia Burbach. Contrary to other concepts with directors elevating the over-mystified, ferry-tale like plot into full abstraction (Loy for Salzburg or Ponnelle for Cologne many years ago), Guth and...

Lot of open questions, the audience remains clueless, some show their disappointment and incomprehension after a new interpretation of Ludwig van Beethoven's only and beloved opera Fidelio. It is this year's main new opera production of the acclaimed Salzburg Festival. This piece is for most music lovers the incarnation of a freedom drama and the triumph of love. The German director Claus Guth has put his hands on this drama of his compatriote to convert it to a revolutionary new...