Opera Festival, Komische Oper, 12–17 July
July sees not one but two opera festivals take place in Berlin: while the first weeks of the month is the time when Berlin's Staatsoper opens its doors for Infektion, a festival of new music comprising performances of five 21st-century operas, the German capital's Komische Oper has chosen mid-July for its annual celebration; among the three Berlin-based opera companies, Komische Oper positions itself as a powerful director's theatre and an enlightener - all operas, regardless of their origin, are always performed only in German here.
With several years under its belt now, the annual Komische Oper Festival showcases the highlights of the outgoing season - and there is a lot to be proud of: a fact a priori determined by the company's strategy of engaging only the strongest creative teams in Europe and worldwide.
The most noteworthy productions featured in this year's programme include the extravagant Australian director (also the freshly-made Chief Director of Komische Oper) Barrie Kosky's macabre and tragic take on Antonín Dvořák's Rusalka; the ensemble includes the Lithuanian soprano Asmik Grigorian.
Another production that definitely should not be missed is the latest work of the Catalan director Calixto Bieito, The Dialogues of the Carmelites by Francis Poulenc, which premieres shortly before the festival. With his sharp and bitter view on the world and radically ruthless studies of the human nature, Bieito has been polarising the European audiences for a decade now, the energy of artistic power never abating.
Every season, Berlin's Komische Oper presents at least one production of an operetta, inviting some of the most contemporary directors to work in this extremely difficult and ostensibly old-fashioned genre. This season, the additions to theatre's repertoire included Ralph Benatzky's Im Weißen Rößl (The White Horse Inn), one of the most popular operettas in the Berlin of the 1930s, staged by Sebastian Baumgarten, a collagist, an apologist for post-modern theatre.
55-57 Behrenstraße
Schedule: www.komische-oper-berlin.de
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