Prince Igor

Borodin: Prince Igor

Prince Igor finds freedom and overwhelming joy of life on the Polovtsian poppy fields...

MET

New York

Sunken Garden

a portal between different worlds...  between past and future... between reality and illusion... 

towards the future of opera

Sunken Garden

Michel van der Aa

David Mitchell

Bloody Parsifal

"...oh, what unforgiven sin am I deemed guilty?"

In this bloody spiritual crisis powerful men full of blood fear they are losing touch with God, while blasphemous women are bloody sinners, seducers and sorcerers, excluded from the clan. 

Can renunciation and compassion save these people in this apocalyptic sea of blood ?

MET

Minotaur

I look through the eyes of a Beast to see the Man

Now I can talk

Now I am Human

Best moment to die

Royal Opera House
Harrison Birtwistle

Opera Magic Avec le Diable

"Heaven, inspire me!"

But devil in disguise is much more inspiring in this Faustian Gothic horror tale of the battle between good and evil.

Meyerbeer: Robert le Diable

libretto

Wild Things

"Max the king of all wild things was lonely

and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all."

Where the Wild Things Are

Say out loud your desire, get experienced and you'll get it,

while your enemies disappear. 

Higglety Pigglety Pop

Barbican

Maurice Sendak - Oliver Knussen

Tempest Charm

Thomas Ades: The Tempest

Fear to the sinner

fire to the impure

storm to the villain

harm to the wrongdoer!

Ariel

There's no need to be rough

they must not be harmed

I wish them only charmed!

Prospero

the opera

The Freedom Fighter

Janacek: The Cunning Little Vixen
in Glyndenbourne

Janacek's vixen-heroine is an independent free spirit who urges others to fight for their freedom, too. 

However she has to enter the eternal life-cycle by falling in love and having children.

Dictatorship

Pinochet

1973 Chile

Caligula

2012 ENO

mad dictators use sports stadiums for the abuse of freedom...

but people's enormous respect for power

 isn't also responsible for dictatorships?

Rusalka Again

"Man is an abomination of nature: he has turned his back to Mother Earth" 
and now lives in an artificial world. He longs to get in touch with the spirits of the forest, the ocean and the blue sky again, but the return to nature is possible only by death.
ROH
Salzburg

Rusalka

1901

Rusalka is a water nimph who falls in love with a human and to meet him she leaves her comfortable watery underworld. But she fails in the cruel reality of human society and as there is no way to return to the safe waters she becomes an undead spirit and kills her lover.

2012

Rusalka is a prostitute who falls in love with a man and to marry him she escapes the brothel - but as she cannot communicate with the outside world she kills herself and his lover.

Dvorák Rusalka in Covent Garden

xxxxx

x

Song to the Moon

Change your life, villain!

Commendatore

Mozart: Don Giovanni

My Hero Anfione

Anfione, King of Thebe
Niobe
Royal Opera House London

Anfione doesn't want power any more. The vision of heaven threatens him, frightens him. He is praying to the spheres to help him to put in motion what stays and give it a harmony.

Katya and the Power of Devil

Katya Kabanova ENO 2010

Poor Katya, she is full of love and desire, but unfortunately the men around her are week and her mother in law is the evil in disguise.

Married Katya becomes infatuated with another man, gives in to temptation and ends her life because of her sense of sin. However it is her evil mother in law in the background who directs the events, manipulates her and his husband and leads the human drama to the final tragedy.

The huge black shadows and the joyless sets of the performance suggest that life is either black or white, right or wrong, stifled or sinful. When confronted by the complexities of human relationships people become mad and psychotic. Life is messy.

Mother in Law and the Devil