Jennifer Homans attended Tanztheater Wuppertal’s performance of “Água,” but all she could see were ghosts: “If these young dancers have something to say, they will need their own form, not Pina Bausch’s. Her Germany is not their Germany, and dance, like history, is nontransferrable.” (The New Yorker, 3/27/23)
Linie 1 gets a new restaging and keeps that ’80s feeling alive. “The entire three-hour show plays out on west Berlin’s U1 underground line, which used to run from glitzy Wittenbergplatz to grotty Schlesisches Tor in the years before the Berlin Wall fell.” (The Guardian, 4/16/23)
There’s a new recording of a Paul Dessau opera that was absent from stages for far too long: “Involving more than 30 solo singing roles, a nine-part chorus and a huge orchestra, as well as dancers and actors, Lanzelot was one of the most ambitious operas ever mounted in the GDR.” (The Guardian, 1/12/23)
The cross-gender casting in a new production of The Threepenny Opera at the Vienna Volksoper isn’t just a gimmick, but a thoughtful experiment with Brechtian Verfremdung in a piece many theatergoers know all too well. (The New York Times, 12/23/22)
“Words, syllables, meter, sound, flow and position,” plus a healthy dose of German hip-hop—kudos to Hamilton‘s German translators, Sera Finale and Kevin Schroeder, for getting the job done. (The New York Times, 9/14/22; The New York Times, 9/14/22; The New York Times, 10/7/22)
“Germany is, on statistical grounds, the most operatic country on earth.” (The New Yorker, 6/13/22)
Eugen Engel was murdered at Sobibor in 1943. His opera Grete Minde, recently discovered in a San Francisco basement, has just had its world premiere at the Theater Magdeburg. (J, 2/7/22; The Guardian, 2/14/22)
Heroism, love, and freedom in the face of injustice: Already inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, Heartbeat Opera’s updated Fidelio “is now permeated with it, and the adaptation is even more powerful.” (The New York Times, 2/14/22)
In memoriam: Hans Neuenfels (1941–2022): His “provocative, iconoclastic productions made him one of the pioneers of modern operatic stagecraft and the frequent target of audience and critical outrage.” (The New York Times, 2/9/22; Operawire, 2/11/22)