Usually, I don’t find much to be excited about in opera stagings meant to overhaul the genre, to give it the resuscitation it apparently needs. They are always more promising on paper, always less effective in execution: I’ve seen all kinds of sexual permissiveness, giant machines, film projections, even singing robots (an especially low point).
Signs of birth and death – but moreso death – flash continuously through the Latvian director Viestur Kairish’s new production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which opened the Komische Oper Berlin’s 2013/14 season.
