Monday, March 21, 2005

Berlin the last bastion of good taste? Audience members booed and some walked out of an "updated" performance of Wagner's Parsifal. "Parsifal is director Bernd Eichinger's first attempt at opera. He moved some action to New York and dressed knights of the Holy Grail as rockers and punks ... Mr Eichinger's version, conducted by Daniel Barenboim, is set in a landscape of buildings collapsing from fires and explosions and relies heavily on video."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Never, EVER go to an opera production directed by a German. One of the most painful evenings of my life was spent trying to explain to an irate companion why I dragged him to a production of Die Meistersinger at the Lyric Opera in Chicago some years back. In Act III, the members of the chorus stood there throughout, evenly distributed across the stage, wearing identical white costumes, sort of jumping up and down in place (rather like the "Jumping Jews of Jerusalem," for those who know their Blackadder.) No shoemakers. No tailors. No bakers. No apprentices. No pretty maedchen. Just a bunch of people in identical white costumes jumping up and down in place.

That was the crowning turd in the punch-bowl, but far from the first.

And the director? For the life of me, I can't remember his name. But: a German, of course.