For its first run of live performances, the production benefitted from both the buzz of a real audience and a generally superior cast to that of the première.Vincent Huguet’s staging, however, remained aggressively bland and perplexingly uninspired, a triumph of sets and costumes over ideas and characters.

Great popularity comes great responsibility, a fact which André Heller’s new Rosenkavalier for the Staatsoper seemed unable to forget.It was undoubtedly a production of the highest quality, beautiful to look at and directed with tasteful subtlety;

Staatsoper Unter den Linden.Verdi: Falstaff.Mario Martone, director.Michael Volle (Sir John Falstaff), Alfredo Daza (Ford), Francesco Demuro (Fenton), Jürgen Sacher (Dr Caius), Stephan Rügamer (Bardolfo), Jan Martiník (Pistola), Barbara Frittoli (Alice Ford), Nadine Sierra (Nannetta), Daniela Barcellona (Quickly), Katharina Kammerloher (Meg Page).

The grand reopening of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden after a seven year refurbishment was undeniably an event of the highest importance in the cultural life of Berlin, but it was also only the latest in a long series of resurrections.

Opera and theatre may be closely related, but they cannot usually be judged according to the same criteria;in the case of opera, our response to the text is mediated and modified by its most obvious defining characteristic: the artifice of singing.

Tenía mucha curiosidad por ver este montaje de la Staatsoper de Berlín, en el que Fred Berndt hace una cariñosa recreación de los decorados realizados por Karl Friedrich Schinkel para las representaciones de La flauta mágica en el Teatro Real de Berlín en 1816.

It’s easy to take Le Nozze di Figaro for granted.Not only is it performed so often that one need never go longer than a year without seeing it, but it is also a resilient work, difficult for all but the most determined director to mess up completely.

Schiller Theater.Berg: Wozzeck.Andrea Breth, director.Cast: Michael Volle (Wozzeck), Marina Prudenskaya (Marie), John Daszak (Drum Major), Florian Hoffmann (Andres), Graham Clark (Captain), Pavlo Hunka (Doctor), Katharina Kammerloher (Margret), Jürgen Linn (First Apprentice), Johann Werner Prein (Second Apprentice), Heinz Zednik (A Fool), Jaroslaw Rogaczewski (A Soldier), and Raphael Küster (Marie’s Child).

Staatsoper Berlin.Le Vin herbé, Secular oratorio by Frank Martin.Katie Mitchell, director.ALizzie Clachan, set and costume designer.James Farncombe, light designer.Katharina Winkler, dramaturgy.Cast: Matthias Klink (Tenor 2, Tristan), Anna Prohaska (Soprano 2, Iseut la Blonde), Evelin Novak (Soprano 3, Branghien), Narine Yeghiyan (Soprano 1), Virpi Räisänen (Alto 4, Iseut aux blanches mains), Katharina Kammerloher (Alto 5, Iseut mère), Stephanie Atanasov (Alto 6), Thorbjørn Gulbrandsøy (Tenor 1), Peter Gijsbertsen (Tenor 3, Kaherdin), Arttu Kataja (Bass 4), Ludvig Lindström (Bass 5, Le Roi Marc), and Jan Martiník (Bass 6, Le Duc Hoël).