Claus Guth's Frau ohne Schatten in Berlin

By Hugo Shirley, 12 April 2017

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“an intensely, viscerally moving moment of theatre”

Reviewed at Schillertheater: Großer Saal, Berlin on 9 April 2017

Strauss R., Die Frau ohne Schatten

Staatsoper Berlin

Zubin Mehta, Conductor

Claus Guth, Director

Christian Schmidt, Set Designer, Costume Designer

Iréne Theorin, Barak the Dyer's Wife

Camilla Nylund, Empress

Michaela Schuster, Nurse

Burkhard Fritz, Emperor

Wolfgang Koch, Barak, the Dyer

Anja Schlosser, A Voice From Above

Karl-Michael Ebner, The Hunchback, Barak's Brother

Jan Martiník, The One-Armed Man, Barak’s Brother

Alfredo Daza, The One-Eyed Man, Barak’s Brother

Andi A. Müller, Video

Martin Wright, Choirmaster / chorus director

Ronny Dietrich, Dramaturgy

Staatsopernchor Berlin

Staatskapelle Berlin

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Hugo Shirley

Hugo Shirley is a Berlin-based writer and musicologist. He has written widely as a critic in the UK, including for The Spectator, the Financial Times and Daily Telegraph, and has held editorial posts at both Opera and Gramophone. He was editor of 30-Second Opera (Ivy Press, 2015) and has a PhD in musicology from King's College London, where his thesis focused on Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s Die Frau ohne Schatten.

Fractures made whole: Claus Guth's shattering Frau ohne Schatten at the Berlin Staatsoper