Calixto Bieito is feeling stressed. “I have an enormous mess” he says, and nine days before the opening of his new production of Wagner’s Das Rheingold at the Opéra National de Paris it’s hard to tell just how seriously he means it. “We started the rehearsals very late because our Wotan was ill and couldn’t rehearse – so I have had to be very fast. I love to be here – the cast is fantastic – but we had to do it in eight days. I’ve felt super-stressed, but it’s OK, and I’m happy”.
And there it is: a quiet smile and the hint – which will surprise no serious opera-lover – that on some level Bieito is never entirely happy unless he’s working at the edge. That’s certainly the impression that you might get from reading the headlines that tend to accompany his productions. “Puerile vandalism” and “stomach-turning rubbish” were some of the more intemperate comments levelled at his early work. More recent verdicts have been more nuanced, and even enthusiastic – though it would be a dull day for the art of opera if Bieito ever lost his capacity to startle, challenge and provoke.
What’s unambiguous is that Bieito is intensely serious about his work, and that he drives himself at a punishing pace. After Paris, he has only a few weeks’ break before heading to the Grand Théâtre de Genève to direct a new production of Khovanshchina, Mussorgsky’s unfinished epic of religion, political turmoil and mass suicide in 17th-century Russia. It’s the latest in a series of radical re-visualisations of Russian classics that Bieito has created in Geneva, including Prokofiev’s War and Peace (2021) and Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (2023).
But you don’t have to be an authority on Russian opera to suspect that Khovanshchina – with its gnarly philosophical themes and tangle of different versions – would put even a director as fearless as Bieito on his mettle. Typically, he’s undaunted. “I mean, I live for this” he says – “directing and travelling. I’ve already prepared Khovanshchina quite well I think, and I’m looking forward to getting started.” One early decision was the choice of version. Along with the conductor Alejo Pérez, Bieito has opted for Shostakovich’s orchestration, with a final scene by Stravinsky.
“This version offers more perspective”, he says, “and being more modern, I feel it’s much nearer to the spirit of Mussorgsky – if we can say that. Because we will never know what Mussorgsky would have said. We don’t know whether it would have been his opinion. But when I did Boris Godunov, I used the first version”.
He means Mussorgsky’s own version: the one that predates the later, widely-used performing edition by Rimsky-Korsakov. Rimsky also created a completion of Khovanshchina, but in doing so may have blunted Mussorgsky’s unvarnished originality. “I like Rimsky-Korsakov’s version very much – some of the music”, says Bieito. “I like some of his own operas too. But Rimsky-Korsakov makes the piece more conventional. It’s not necessary. Mussorgsky is very laconic, and this is good”.
Still, if there’s one thing you can expect from any Bieito production, it’s that he will let nothing – no convention, no tradition – prevent him from taking his own, often shocking, course to what he sees as the heart of the piece. He freely acknowledges that the results are not for all palates.
“Some people think I’m arrogant, but it’s the opposite. I cannot control the audience. I did a show in London when I was very young, Barbaric Comedies, and it was a disaster, an enormous scandal. Then one month later we took it to Dublin and it was an enormous success. I won all the prizes of the year! And I thought, ‘I don’t understand anything’. If I start to think about the audience, I will go crazy. Which audience is conservative, which is not? Of course I don’t know. I cannot. I don’t like to make people ‘boo’ – it’s not my intention. But I cannot change my taste or the things I’m doing with my team.”
As for Khovanshchina: well, there’s no denying that Bieito’s boyhood in Franco’s totalitarian Spain, and his education at the hands of Jesuits (who he says taught him “terror”), gives him a very particular entry point to the bloody, religiously-dominated world of Mussorgsky’s drama. Simply treating it as history is not an option. “There are wonderful roles, and an opportunity to explore this confrontation between the violence of the military, the nationalist movements, the fundamentalists, the love story, and how this affects all of us, socially”, he says. “We are living today, we are modern. We have to interpret it”.
Which brings us to the snarling bear in the room for any director staging a Russian opera in 2025 – the current political situation. As Bieito sees it, there are broader issues at stake:
“I cannot avoid it 100%, of course not. But I cannot pretend to give a lesson about Russian history. I don’t like to talk about things I don’t know, and even Khovanshchina is not 100% true to the real historical facts. Of course, I have friends in Russia; I’ve worked in St Petersburg. But I think we have to approach Khovanshchina as if we were doing Hamlet or King Lear. It’s a universal story. There are always people who want to keep the old ways, and people who want society to develop. Humanity always has this fight; this is a struggle, always. And yes, you can interpret it as if one side are religious fundamentalists. But equally, they could be people who prefer to live in harmony with nature.
“If Russian culture has anything in common with part of the Spanish mindset, I think it’s the fascination with utopia – the impossibility of finding utopia. There’s also a relationship with Spanish anarchy. As you know, in the Spanish Civil War, the anarchist movement was very strong. And Russia is always swinging between anarchist movements. This is something I can understand well. For me, to understand well means to feel it in your body”. He points to his head, and then his chest.
“Not just here – not just in my brain. In my body. I can feel the violence, which is very near to Spanish culture, to Goya. There’s a painting by Goya, Duelo a garrotazos, in which two men are hitting each other with sticks. This is Spain, and in a way it’s close to Russia as well. It’s the history of humanity. Human beings are sometimes not nice to each other, and there is an enormous lack of empathy in the world. It’s in my work, this lack of empathy.
“But I’m not one to give messages or advice. Because we must not forget the art. It’s an interpretation, always. I like to put on stage what I see. I will not go to a restaurant if I don’t like the food. But I think to go to the opera is wonderful – there is wonderful music and there are wonderful singers. There are a lot of things that you can grab on to. I’m trying to create strong pictures. Unconsciously, I’m creating bottles with messages inside about my life, my childhood. I don’t know if anybody is going to read them, but that’s OK. I don’t believe in posterity.”
This, then, will be a Khovanshchina created here and now, to speak to audiences here and now by a director who responds to art on a visceral level. “It’s a fascinating piece. I will be very happy to be in Geneva because I know I will have all the singers, and I will have enough time, and this makes me happy”. When Bieito spells it out, it all seems so natural – so simple. Alright: “simple” is probably not quite the word. But still, he adds, “you can see the lake in Geneva”. For this particular director, there’s always a bigger picture. And with that, for now, it’s back to the pressure-cooker of Wagner rehearsals in Paris. “I will finish” he says, smiling. “The Wagnerians, they will kill me – but I will finish the cycle”. You suspect he wouldn’t have it any other way.
Calixto Bieito’s production of Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina is at Grand Théâtre de Genève from 25th March to 3rd April.
This article was sponsored by Grand Théâtre de Genève.
