Eötvös' Senza Sangue: at last, a real partner for Bluebeard's Castle

By Katherine Syer, 10 November 2016

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Reviewed at Hamburgische Staatsoper: Main Hall, Hamburg on 6 November 2016

Eötvös, Senza sangue (Without Blood)

Bartók, Duke Bluebeard's Castle

Staatsoper Hamburg

Peter Eötvös, Conductor

Dmitri Tcherniakov, Director, Set Designer

Elena Zaytseva, Costume Designer

Angela Denoke, La Donna

Sergei Leiferkus, L'Uomo

Claudia Mahnke, Judith

Bálint Szabó, Bluebeard

Gleb Filshtinsky, Lighting Designer

Johannes Blum, Dramaturgy

Frauenliebe und -sterben: Kratzer’s triple bill at Staatsoper Hamburg

Mengguang Huang, 15th April

Director Tobias Kratzer engineers a haunting pasticcio of Schumann, Bartók and Zemlinsky, tracing the domestic sphere’s shift from romantic surrender to the blood-soaked secrets of a century-spanning house.

****1

Vampires, Disney and Donald Trump: Monster’s Paradise in Hamburg

Kevin W Ng, 1st February

Olga Neuwirth and Elfriede Jelinek take on Donald Trump in their latest operatic collaboration.

****1

Unsuk Chin's opera Die dunkle Seite des Mondes premieres in Hamburg

Mengguang Huang, 31st May

At Staatsoper Hamburg, Unsuk Chin’s new opera The Dark Side of the Moon immerses audiences in an hypnotic, introspective journey, where dreams, science and psyche collide in a rigorously crafted, thought-provoking spectacle.

****1

Franciscan virtues for a modern age: a multimedia Messiaen remix

Peter Quantrill, 2nd June

No half measures in a triple-decker Hamburg staging of Saint François d'Assise at the Elbphilharmonie.

***11

Staatsoper Hamburg's new Boris Godunov traverses Russian history

Alexander Hall, 16th September

Opening the new opera season, Kent Nagano powerfully directs Mussorgsky's great psychodrama about a famous tsar, marred only by Frank Castorf's visually confusing and symbolically overweighted production.

****1

Beauty and the beast: Sciarrino's Venere e Adone premieres in Hamburg

Alexander Hall, 28th May

What does opera in the 21st century look and sound like? Streets removed from anything Mozart, Verdi or Wagner would have recognised. But Salvatore Sciarrino is his own man.

***11

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Katherine Syer

Katherine Syer is a Los Angeles-based writer/editor, public scholar, and dramaturg following a teaching career at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and UCLA