Exhibit 2: Lulu in the Theater a.d. Wien, this June. This was a failure with more serious intentions. The director was a the Spanish dance choreographer Marlene Monteiro Freitas. True to her vocation, she wheeled out a whole company of dancers on stage that literally took over the action. The singers had to find their way in between the dancers. That included a contortionist who tied herself into knots throughout the opera. (maybe a symbol of the situation of the protagonists?) A friend of mine, who was unfamiliar with the opera, said afterwards that she didn’t have the faintest idea what the opera was about. Sadly, or fortunately, musically the performance was superb, both the singing and the orchestra. I closed my eyes at some point. Lulu doesn’t need much. The interactions are shocking enough by themselves and don’t need any amplification or embellishment. I conclude that in every season you are lucky when you have one or at most two performances where everything works and the magic of opera takes off and transports you to another world. (This year it was the Lohengrin in the Staatsoper - Nina Stemme, Camilla Nylund, Piotr Beczalas and Tomasz Konieczny, under the unexpectedly magnificent baton of Omer Meir Wellber. I have long reached the point that I prefer concertante to staged operas. I can better concentrate on the singing and the music, and it’s more affordable. But nothing beats the experience of a staged opera where everything comes together.
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