Hit me with your best Shoshty
Barrie Kosky’s zany production of The Nose time-steps back onto the Komische Oper Berlin stage.
Komische Oper
17 pieces since 2011.
17
pieces
16
years
Any recording of Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny is so overrated
It’s always surprised me how so many performances of the major Brecht/Weill collaborations seem to have zero clue of how to handle either Weill’s music.
By Cornelia
6 comments
The best thing I saw in 2025 was Salome
Many productions have emphasized Salome’s youth, but few have gone as far as this spectacular and visceral production at the Komische Oper by Evgeny Titov.
By Ben Miller
Comment
Everything is “and,” not “or”
James Gaffigan, the incoming Music Director of Houston Grand Opera, strikes a balance between New World precision and Old World flair in repertoire, staging, and wine
I’m still thinking about Laurent Pelly’s The Golden Cockerel
In a lifetime of opera going I suppose I have seen many transformative productions, but this recent one seems, in the light of the increasing disaster enfolding this country, uncannily pertinent.
By Belfagor
Comment
Crazy extremes
Simon McBurney’s Die Zauberflöte, the second new production of the Met’s May Mozart Miracle, opened on Friday to rousing near-unanimous cheers.
Rebranding the Met
A quick survey of the Met website shows wide swaths of available seats for the upcoming performances of La traviata and L’elisir d’amore. Only new works like The Hours and Fire Shut Up in My Bones have been achieving sold-out houses.
Sweet dreams
Bard SummerScape’s concert staging of Die Tote Stadt emerged triumphant thanks to Clay Hilley and Sara Jakubiak.
Berlin wall
Why did I mostly want to close my eyes and just listen?
Panglossed over
Celebrating Lenny’s 100th this year has made Candide ubiquitous at opera houses worldwide.
Tragically Hippolyte
I had my head in my hands groaning in disbelief instead of joining in the general applause around me.
Words and music
As is happening increasingly in opera productions today (e.g., the Rosenkavalier in Stuttgart), the action of Moses und Aron at the Komische Oper begins some minutes before the music does.
The bough friend
The Deutsche Opera an Rhein production of Handel’s Xerxes (which is shared with the Berlin Komische Oper), though I saw it three nights ago, has taken a while to settle down in my brain.
Wholly Grail
Certain opera productions become the stuff of legend as much for the circumstances surrounding the performance as for the musical results.
Scale model
Opera is about the possibility of transformation. An unassuming woman can walk in through the theater’s stage door and emerge on stage as fiery princess capable of making the walls rattle. Alas, these transformations inevitably fail to stick. Every Turandot must hang up her crown; every Elektra must put down her ax one final time. […]
Mozart at the peepshow
First night in Berlin, since the feared jet lag did not, in fact, do your doyenne in, was spent at the Komische Oper seeing Die Entführung aus dem Serail in the “notorious” Calixto Bieito production. La Cieca’s opinion?
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
