Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Komische Oper Berlin

There’s no doubt that Mélisande endeavours to escape past troubles when she first appears in Barrie Kosky’s production of Debussy’s opera, yet Nadja Mchantaf is no reticent, wispy maiden. Every vocal and physical gesture – always precise and penetrating – displays an atypically forthright quest for vitality, something that Arkel’s chauvinistic world does not readily offer.

Franz Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten (The Branded One) is an unsettling work given the storyline’s background of abduction and clandestine sexual abuse. Calixto Bieito, as expected, eschews ambiguity regarding what goes on behind the scenes, and casts even the titular cripple Alviano Salvago in a damning light.

Shostakovich's early masterpiece is fêted at the Komische Oper Berlin

Handel’s Semele is presented as a flashback at the Komische Oper in Berlin. 

Tchaikovsky's opera packs a powerful emotional punch in the Komische Oper's concentrated and dreamlike production.

Stefan Herheim packs puns and gags into a three-hour long show, but less could have been more. 

With many costume changes, notably into a Sun-King with very prominent phalic sunburst, Houtzeel held centre-stage in the title role.

The Spanish director offers a controversial angle but tones it down to focus on dark psychology rather than spectacle in his staging of Schrecker's hothouse opera.

“Fiddler on the Roof” as a universal parable of tradition 

Introspected and atmospheric, this late romantic opera appeals to the psychotherapists within us.

A woman, mother and outcast needs to make life choices in a hostile environment.

With a guest performance of the Komische Oper Berlin, Barrie Kosky's and Suzanne Andrade's magical production triumphs in Budapest.

Sorochyntsi Fair was last performed at Berlin's Komische Oper in 1948 by the legendary stage director Walter Felsenstein. Now Barrie Kosky, stage director and intendant, has tried his hand.

Could this be the most perfect fusion of music and visuals known to mankind!?

A hilarious pearl of an operetta. Barry Kosky reigns supreme in Berlin!

Barrie Kosky's 2011 production confines the action of the opera to a stark white room. A fine ensemble of singers made for a successful evening.

Before the beginning of each opera, an announcement is made reminding the audience not to film, photograph, tweet, post, google, snapchat... Komische Oper Berlin premieres a hilarious Barber of Seville where the singers do nothing but just that.

If you can imagine an undiscovered PG Wodehouse story set to music by Cole Porter, you wouldn’t be far off. 

Revel with a naughty Don Giovanni at the Komische Opera in Berlin.

Komische Oper's re-imagining of Nico Dostal's 1933 operetta makes for delightfully escapist, romantic evening out, while Christoph Marti's superb drag performance of the title role makes it a memorable one.

There may be spiders, or zombies above your head. A spook show? Berlin's Komische Oper premiers a gothic musical theatre work by Heinrich Marschner... and it is a gory, good romp.

Barrie Kosky's new production of Eugene Onegin at the Komische Oper Berlin is delicious for the eyes, ears and emotions. 

Barrie Kosky, with nods to the surreal and the macabre, plunges us headlong into Hoffmann’s nightmarish world in a terrific new production at the Komische Oper.

The Komische Oper production of Die Zauberflöte is a modern classic: absolute magic conjured by Barrie Kosky and the team from 1927 theatre.

Barrie Kosky's production of Schoenberg's unfinished masterpiece is brought to musical life by Vladimir Jurowski's intense and compelling interpretation.

At the Komische Oper Berlin, West Side Story has some incredible highlights, but leaves a few too many whys to be wholly enjoyable, with some curious production details.

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.

At the end of the season, and before closing for the summer break, the Komische Oper Berlin reprise some of their most successful recent productions for one night only in the Komische Oper Festival, including the popular “cartoon” Magic Flute. Included in this busy week was a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa, a rarely performed epic opera of battle-torn love and murder.

Die Zauberflöte is a work whose outward simplicity masks internal complexity and even contradictions. Mozart’s music is childishly tuneful and yet reaches for the classically sublime; Emmanuel Schikaneder’s libretto alternates a magical quest story out of a German storybook with Masonic claptrap and secondhand Voltaire.

Germany is the land of Regie-Theater, opera in which the director’s vision is paramount, and where that vision frequently contains an alternative tale in a modern setting based on thoughts that the opera has inspired in the director.

Dans le cadre de sa programmation estivale, l'opéra comique de Berlin proposait une nouvelle production de Barbe-Bleue de Jacques Offenbach.

Cette Flûte Enchantée, aussi visuelle que musicale, est un spectacle pour tous, idéal pour initier à l’opéra les petits comme les grands.

Allzu lange kaute Rameau für den Geschmack des damaligen Publikums auf der Gegenüberstellung von Gut und Böse, Schwarz und Weiß herum. Wäre die Neuproduktion der Komischen Oper Berlin die Uraufführung gewesen, hätte es Rameaus Bühnenmusik wohl auch nicht leichter gehabt. 

Barrie Kosky spielt in einer neuen Fassung von Die Krönung der Poppea an der Komischen Oper mit traditionellen Konventionen des Männlich-Weiblichen.

Auch nach vier Jahren lockt die Produktion von Mozarts Evergreen das Publikum in Scharen ins Opernhaus und verspricht einen anregenden Abend.