Richard Strauss – the home sites of the well -being

The usual “boo”, “Bäh” and “Pfui” of the fundamental enemies of the director’s theater in the opera did not deserve director Tobias Kratzer that evening. His productions are usually among the comprehensible, easy to consume. Kratzer stands for digestible quality: In 2019, even Bayreuth and his “Tannhäuser” gave the only noteworthy production in the past ten years. The 45-year-old Lower Bavaria is now blooming at the Hamburg State Opera, which he will start in August this year.

However, an appreciative yawn would have been appropriate, after the net three -quarter hours of bourgeois soap opera, who had distilled scratches from Richard Strauss’ “The woman without shadow”. The curtain went up and they were already standing again, the inevitable demons of the realistic stage design: designer kitchens and noble couch, coffee machines and cloakrooms. If you want to see the tribulation of the home buildings of the well -being for the thousand times, you have either never been in the opera or work in the field. Feest every second German staging relies on the domestic average of an inhabited furniture exhibition these days.

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As a contrast, the world of working population is then needed – it must be marked with aldit bags, laundry salons and irrepressible joie de vivre in adverse circumstances. There is nothing in between – the opera takes bitter realities of the concentrating distribution of prosperity. Soon it will be so. Until the real impairment, the state culture creators still stage such opposites as funny natural laws of the Federal Republic. Fortunately, Kratzer’s stage and costume designer Rainer Sellmaier always has a knack for the authentic street look- training suits and work aprons.

In this new “woman without shadow” at the Deutsche Oper Berlin on the premiere evening last Sunday, Clay Hilley sings the emperor: The steep career path of the 43-year-old American hero dentator led him to Bayreuth last year after he opened in 2023 from one day the other spontaneously stepped in for Stephen Gould as Siegfried at the “goddom”. Soprano Daniela Köhler sings his empress with her nurse Marina Prudenskaya. On the human forehead of the mystical cosmos there are also regular Bayreuth protagonists with the Hawaiian Bariton Jordan Shanahan as dye and Catherine Foster than his wife. The bass Patrick Guetti as a medium ghost messenger. Sir Donald Runnicles, General Music Director of the House, conducts personally.

Richard Strauss’ longest opera was created in the First World War as a court bandmaster in Berlin. The device, which is now meant and told in this exuberant three -act, began at the premiere in 1919 at the Vienna State Opera for the rain dissatisfaction of the audience. A cryptic game that director Kratzer does not even get involved. Consumption and fertility are very secular things and in the 21st century pure matter of psychotherapy and gynecology. That is why the nurse of her queen suggests artificial insemination. The situation is similar in the dyeing, which is a laundry here.

In parallel to the libretto that is too late romantically, the staging produces loving profaneities and liberal wisdom: sex is beautiful, love too, but sometimes it is better to divorce. The ancient retirement in the reduced places does not even want to understand that scratches cuddle with the conservative part of the card buyers. The piece ends with kindergarten and parent happiness. But in the world of principles, it is more about the wish than the children.

In the sporting sense, ovation for running, medium applause for Hilley and solidarity clapping for the children, choirs and all other soloists. One night in the opera is just a day on the racetrack.

Next performances: January 30th, 2.2., 5.2., 8.2., 11.2.