We were expecting an extraordinary show. First, there was the symbolic choice of 3 October, the day of Germany’s reunification. Then the reuniting of two giants of Berlin’s musical scene, Harry Kupfer as stage director and Daniel Barenboim as musical director. And then there is the opera itself, Fidelio, an apologia for freedom and faithfulness, perfect for evoking the isolation of the former Eastern Bloc. The promise of a great opera moment is realised in the first bars of...

Luigi Nono is one of the most prominent composers of the 20th century. He was born in Venice into a wealthy family and studied music and law in Padua. For further education he moved to Germany, where he became friend with Hans Werner Henze, Karl Heinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez, all of them musical leaders of the Avant-garde. Notable for his strong political left wing orientation, his musical heritage and influence are enormous. He experimented with new sound possibilities and involved...

La Scala’s season opening every 7 December is always a major event, but this year the excitement is especially high as it marks Daniel Barenboim’s farewell to this theatre to which he gave his all. And we must first of all admire his performance: his conducting, ample, powerful and taut without any superfluous showmanship, perfectly sums up the spirt of Beethoven's only opera, the morality of an upright man stated in clear and radiant sound by a constantly renewed dynamic,...

Would we witness the 19th century fairy tale scenery on stage, again? Would we be bored by a "normal" love-jealousy-revenge story as basis for brilliant singing and superbly instrumented orchestra playing, wondering why opera still made into the 21st century ? One can easily imagine by reading the plot before the performance. Not so when the curtain of this production rises ! Not so with Dmitri Tcherniakov ! Tcherniakov embeds the traditional plot into the reality of...

 With merciless sequence is the audience drawn into Wozzeck’s circles of suffering in Büchner’s play. Berg’s music creates passion and compassion of and for the characters and victims of this inescapable orbit. The precision of Andrea Breth’s unstoppable clockwork in light of Wozzeck’s fate is a supreme staging and interpretation completely based on strict reserve and subordination to plot, text, and subtext. The purism of the approach...

Harry Kupfer´s production of 2000 is very restricted and back to the essantials of good singing and acting of all participants. The stage throughout all acts is dominated by a big amor fallen on stage, his wings widespread symbolising the fallen love, ready to be freed again. Daniel Barenboim conducts his Staatskapelle Berlin  monstrous voluminous sometimes missing the romantic passages and signs of salvation and liberation. Strong forte pushes the singers to give their...