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    Barrie Kosky Is the Director New York Has Been Waiting For

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    One of the busiest stage directors in Europe is fully arriving, at last, with “The Threepenny Opera” this spring.When “The Threepenny Opera” returns to New York this spring, for an all-too-brief visit to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, it will be notable for a few reasons.For one, it will be a homecoming. Although “Threepenny” was born in Berlin, an artifact of Weimar-era culture, with music by Kurt Weill and text by Bertolt Brecht and Elisabeth Hauptmann, it had a midcentury resurgence on the level of a pop-culture phenomenon when it was revived Off Broadway in 1954.And it will be performed by the Berliner Ensemble, which was founded by Brecht and still operates out of the theater where “Threepenny” had its premiere in 1928. The group is a trustworthy custodian of a work that is often mishandled today, especially in recent New York productions.But what is most important about this run of “Threepenny,” presented by BAM and St. Ann’s Warehouse April 3 through 6, is that it will be the first real opportunity for New York audiences to see the work of the director Barrie Kosky.Though Kosky, 58, graced local playbills once before, when his production of “The Magic Flute,” a collaboration with the company 1927, came to the Mostly Mozart Festival in 2019, “Threepenny” will be the first show that is purely his own. Which should come as a shock, since Kosky is one of the busiest and most brilliant, not to mention entertaining, directors working in Europe today.He is a director accomplished in theater and opera. His work could fit easily on Broadway and at the Metropolitan Opera, with a balance of intelligence and showmanship that would breathe new life into both. This “Threepenny” will be an opportunity for him to win over New York audiences. Will impresarios be watching?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Paul Mescal Rides ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ to Brooklyn

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      The award-winning production will begin performances in February as part of Brooklyn Academy of Music’s next season.Brooklyn Academy of Music next spring will present an Olivier Award-winning revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire” starring Paul Mescal, the Irish actor, in the role made famous by Marlon Brando.The production is the high point of the next season at BAM, which, like many nonprofit arts organizations, has been struggling to rebuild after a period of economic challenges and leadership change.“Streetcar,” one of Tennessee Williams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning plays, imagines a down-on-her-luck Southern woman’s disruptive visit to the New Orleans home of her sister and brother-in-law. It was first staged on Broadway in 1947, and this latest revival began at London’s Almeida Theater in 2022, and then transferred to the West End in 2023. Not only did the production win an Olivier, but so did Mescal and Anjana Vasan for their portrayals of Stanley and Stella Kowalski. Vasan will join Mescal in Brooklyn, as will Patsy Ferran, reprising her London performance as Blanche DuBois.The critic Matt Wolf, writing in The New York Times, called the London production “an electrifying ensemble production.”Mescal, an Oscar nominee for “Aftersun,” is also known for the series “Normal People” and the film “All of Us Strangers,” but he is likely to become much better known this month because he is starring in “Gladiator II.” “Streetcar” is his American theater debut.The production, directed by Rebecca Frecknall, will return to the West End from Feb. 3 to 22 at the Noël Coward Theater before transferring to BAM where it is scheduled to run from Feb. 28 to April 6. The producers of the West End production, led by ATG Entertainment, a large British theater company with a growing presence in New York, are credited as presenting partners at BAM.Among the other highlights of the BAM season is a production of “The Threepenny Opera” performed by the Berliner Ensemble under the direction of Barrie Kosky. Joshua Barone, reviewing the production in Berlin for The New York Times, called it “hauntingly enjoyable.”BAM will also present “Macbeth in Stride,” Whitney White’s reimagining of Lady Macbeth “as an indomitable Black female icon.” The production was at Washington’s Shakespeare Theater Company last year; in The Washington Post, Celia Wren called it “an ingenious meditation on ambition and the Bard.”Both of those shows will be in April; the opera is being presented with St. Ann’s Warehouse, and the play is a co-production with Shakespeare Theater Company and Philadelphia Theater Company, both of which staged it last fall, and Yale Repertory Theater, which is staging it next month.There will also be dance (including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Batsheva Dance Company and the annual DanceAfrica event), music (including Max Richter), films and children’s programming. More

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      Royal Opera House’s Music Director Leaves His Mark

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      Antonio Pappano says the London house, where he is wrapping up 22 years as music director, “will always be my home.”After 22 years as the music director at the Royal Opera House in London, Antonio Pappano has a tried-and-true recipe for creating traction around the art form.“The choices you make and the energy which you share with audiences will keep them coming,” he said.The British-born conductor, 64, has left his mark on the house through a strong work ethic and an in-depth understanding of the voice. His final production is a David McVicar staging of Giordano’s “Andrea Chénier,” starring Jonas Kaufmann, that is onstage through Tuesday. He then leads the company on tour to Japan, from June 22 to July 2, with productions of Verdi’s “Rigoletto” and Puccini’s “Turandot.”Pappano, whose parents were Italian immigrants, gravitates naturally toward the works of that tradition. But he has also championed everyone including contemporary British composers, Russian repertoire and Wagner. Through 2027, he will return at intervals to the Royal Opera to conduct all four installments of a “Ring” cycle staged by Barrie Kosky.Parallel to the Royal Opera, Pappano served as the music director of the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, a position that he relinquished last year. The next phase of his career will be dedicated to the London Symphony Orchestra, where he will officially take over as the chief conductor in the 2024-25 season.Pappano’s final production is a David McVicar staging of Giordano’s “Andrea Chénier,” starring Jonas Kaufmann, that is onstage through Tuesday. Isabel Infantes/ReutersWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Review: ‘Chicago,’ With Nary a Finger Snap

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      Barrie Kosky’s Berlin production of the 1975 musical adds a touch of burlesque and a dash of Bertolt Brecht.The seedy, culturally vibrant and rapidly modernizing Berlin of the 1920s was nicknamed “Chicago on the Spree.” That moniker sprang to mind recently during the premiere of a masterful and muscular new production of “Chicago,” directed by Barrie Kosky at the Komische Oper Berlin.“Chicago,” a “story of greed, corruption, violence, exploitation, adultery and treachery,” to quote the prologue, is the longest-running show currently on Broadway, but it got a very mixed reception when it opened there in 1975. Many of those early audience members were uncomfortable with Fred Ebb, Bob Fosse and John Kander’s use of musical showstoppers in the service of an amoral satire, and the show’s jerky and pastiche-like narrative technique.For his production, Kosky has gone back to the original concept of the show as a musical vaudeville with a heavy dose of bile and a dash of Brechtian alienation, while also embracing burlesque elements. Michael Levine’s dazzling set is outfitted with nearly 7000 light bulbs, which intelligently frame the actors, and the action, in frequently changing configurations that suggest a nightclub, a prison cell and a circus ring.Many of the costumes in Kosky’s production give a nod to the musical’s roots in burlesque and vaudeville.Barbara BraunThere are definite echoes of Kosky’s darkly glittering take on “The Threepenny Opera” from 2021. But this “Chicago” is not another radical rethinking of a canonical work, nor is Kosky clearing the cobwebs from an aged classic, as he did previously with “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Candide.” This “Chicago” is simply a damn good show, with an attention to choreography and musical verve rarely found outside Broadway or the West End. The production offered further proof, if any was needed, that Kosky has made the Komische Oper — which has always embraced various forms of music theater — the best place for classic American musicals on the continent.The show, performed in a limber German translation by Helmut Baumann and Erika Gesell, is impeccably cast. Katharine Mehrling, an acclaimed chanteuse and regular Kosky collaborator, brings the right mix of naïveté and tenacity to the role of Roxie Hart, the washed-up chorus girl whose trial for murdering her lover catapults her to stardom. As her jail mate and rival vaudevillian Velma Kelly, Ruth Brauer-Kvam gives a sexy, assured performance. She’s also the cast’s truest triple threat, singing, twirling and acting her way through the evening without breaking a sweat.Jörn-Felix Alt brings a rakish, matinee-idol charm to his performance as Billy Flynn, the shyster lawyer who orchestrates media circuses for his female clients. Andreja Schneider makes a sassy, straight-shooting Mama Morton, the crooked warden of Cook’s County Jail, while Ivan Tursic doesn’t overdo the pathos as Roxy’s chump of a husband, Amos.The music, performed in its original 1975 orchestration, sounds fantastic played by a full orchestra — a luxury you rarely get on Broadway. The conductor Adam Benzwi shapes the music with precision and vitality, and his band gives the changing temperatures and moods the score requires.Jörn-Felix Alt, center, brings a rakish, matinee-idol charm to his performance as the lawyer Billy Flynn.Barbara BraunHandsome and sleek, the staging is as stripped-down as some of Kosky’s other recent productions, but he also knows when to pull out the stops. Mehrling makes her bold entrance in “All That Jazz,” trailed by a dozen dancers hiding behind red ostrich feather fans. Kosky brings back the razzle-dazzle in the final number, “Nowadays,” when Roxy and Velma are outfitted in the sparkliest suits legally permitted onstage. In between, Victoria Behr’s costumes provide plenty of other fresh and smoothly executed ideas, including orange silk robes for the prisoners and surreal touches like masks of oversized heads and cartoon lips.The choreographer Otto Pichler, credited as a co-director, crafts sparkling dance numbers for the soloists and his 12-person troupe with nary a finger snap, twist or slow-motion hip roll in sight. This is a welcome choice, since anything that is overdone — even a style as vivid as Fosse’s — can become fossilized.After the Komische Oper opened its season with a monumental production staged in an airport hangar, “Chicago” is the company’s first show at the Schiller Theater, its temporary home, in the west of Berlin, while lengthy renovations to its historic house continue.Luring audiences to the other side of town this season doesn’t appear to be an issue: Even before opening night, virtually the entire run of “Chicago” had sold out.ChicagoThrough Jan. 27, 2024, at Komische Oper Berlin; komische-oper-berlin.de. More

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      Review: This London ‘Ring’ Is on the Met Opera’s Radar

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      It’s not stage-filling spectacle, but Barrie Kosky’s version of Wagner’s “Das Rheingold,” the start of a four-opera epic, is eerie, vivid and intense.Two years ago, the Metropolitan Opera went shopping for a new “Ring” in London and came home empty-handed.English National Opera’s first installment of Wagner’s four-part epic of gods and humans, lust and power, was judged a bit too scrappy and bare to transfer to the grand Met. And anyway, the English company was soon reeling from cuts to its government funding, putting the completion of the cycle in jeopardy.The Met would like to bring a “Ring” to New York in four seasons — a blink of an eye given opera’s glacial planning cycles and Wagner’s technical and casting complexities. So its leadership has another London option under consideration: a production directed by Barrie Kosky that opened on Monday at the Royal Opera, the city’s bigger and older company.Eerie, vivid and intense, Kosky’s version of “Das Rheingold,” the first “Ring” opera, is a show that an opera house on either side of the Atlantic could be proud of, accessible and stimulating for Wagner newcomers and connoisseurs alike. The story is crystal clear, and its emotional and political stakes are taken seriously, without oversimplification or overstatement.It would also finally bring to the Met one of opera’s finest, most rangy and resourceful directors. (A collaboration on Prokofiev’s “Fiery Angel” was spiked during the pandemic.) Kosky, who was born in Australia, was celebrated during his recently ended tenure at the helm of the Komische Oper in Berlin, for his revivals of long-forgotten operettas and his giddy disregard for distinctions between high and low art, between “Kiss Me, Kate” and “Moses und Aron.”His signature style is zany, high-spirited and high-kicking, but he can do sober and austere when the piece calls for it, like a starkly savage “Kat’a Kabanova” at the Salzburg Festival last year. His Royal Opera “Rheingold,” though not without shots of bitter humor, is in this vein.The work’s single, two-and-a-half hour act is all played atop, around and inside a huge hollow tree trunk, collapsed on its side. This is a dying world, Kosky suggests — and to that end he puts Erda, the earth goddess who intones a climactic warning, onstage almost throughout, in the form of a silent actress: elderly, naked, frail, vulnerable. (For that climactic monologue, the singer is hidden from the audience.)Katharina Konradi with the magic gold, whose theft from the Rhine sets the “Ring” in motion.Monika RittershausThe gold whose theft from the Rhine sets the “Ring” in motion, and from which the central ring of power is forged, is here a shiny, syrupy fluid that flows from the tree. It evokes, appropriately, a union of metal and river, as well as the fossil fuels on which the global economy is disastrously based. Its associations range bodily and geologic — lava, milk, semen, blood, honey — and characters lick it greedily from their hands.Kosky and his set designer, Rufus Didwiszus, have imagined Nibelheim, the inferno in which the stolen gold is worked on, as a steampunkish industrial monstrosity, with clamps gripping the tree. Erda, her torso popping out of a knot in the trunk, is connected to tubes that pump the iridescent batter from her body and drain it into pails. This society is built from — and rotted by — the devaluation of women (particularly the old) and environmental exploitation.Victoria Behr’s costumes are contemporary, and there are hints of British flavor: These wealthy, self-serving gods have a taste for nostalgic old-money activities like polo. But this is a basically placeless, timeless production; its primary location, the theater. Kosky emphasizes this by having the audience enter, curtain up, to see the unadorned expanses around the stage. Stagehands do their work visibly, and Alessandro Carletti’s lighting draws attention to its equipment.Kosky uses steam, lights, loudspeakers and knobby holes in the tree to conjure, in charmingly old-fashioned ways, the magic effects and transformations of Wagner’s libretto. But this staging mostly lacks proscenium-filling spectacle — and it was a similar lack that made English National Opera’s “Ring” a no-go for the Met.The transitions between the scenes in “Das Rheingold,” from the heights of mountains to the bowels of the earth and back again, are played at the Royal Opera with the curtain closed, as if Kosky is thumbing his nose at expectations that he is supposed to provide more of a scenic extravaganza. Instead, those interludes are simply showcases for Antonio Pappano, starting his swan-song season as the company’s music director, and the orchestra.You could call this meager. But on Monday, it felt more like focused modesty.Christopher Purves, center, as Alberich transforms the tree into an industrial monstrosity pumping golden fluid from Rose Knox-Peebles, left, as Erda.Monika RittershausWork that’s powerful in the 2,200-seat Royal Opera House won’t necessarily make the same impact in the Met, nearly double that size. But the last New York production of the cycle, directed by Robert Lepage on a preposterously expensive, 45-ton high-tech set, was, when it opened in 2010, an artistic embarrassment for the company as well as a depressing example of empty-headed excess at a time of financial crisis.The “Ring,” given its size and prominence, is a symbol of an opera house’s values, and the lean vitality of Kosky’s vision, which will unfold in London over the coming years, seems right for an era of budget and programming cuts.At the Royal Opera, Pappano and the orchestra match Kosky with fiery but never overblown playing, especially from the lush yet biting strings, their intimacy startling. This is a “Rheingold” that, first and foremost, supports its singers.Wotan, the king of the gods, and Alberich, the dwarf who steals the gold from the Rhine, are here almost brotherly figures, both with bald heads and sturdy bodies, and they share certain qualities, too. Christopher Purves’s Alberich has aristocratic reserve, while Christopher Maltman’s booming, tight-smiling Wotan is capable of feverish aggression; it is shocking but not surprising when he cuts off Alberich’s finger to take the ring.Yet the tenderness with which Maltman embraces the fragile Erda, as the voice of the goddess is heard warning him to give up the ring, is just as indelible, and feels just as true. As Fricka, Wotan’s wife, Marina Prudenskaya sings with slicing anxiety; Sean Panikkar is a charismatically grinning, cackling playboy as Loge, the anarchic fire god; Insung Sim is unusually agonized as the giant Fasolt.This is not an ostentatious production. But the finale, which shouldn’t be given away, is proscenium-filling spectacle, and vintage Kosky, in that it uses one of theater’s simplest, most traditional devices with unforgettable showman flair, conveying all the glittering glamour and fundamental emptiness of the gods’ ascent to their new home — a triumph as hollow as the giant tree.Das RheingoldThrough Sept. 29 at the Royal Opera House, London; roh.co.uk. More

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      A Lot of Opera Is Now Streaming. Here’s Where to Start.

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      Naxos, which collects videos of productions throughout Europe, has begun to make its catalog available on Amazon Prime Video.Opera isn’t so different from film and television in its glut of streaming platforms — which can be just as challenging, and expensive, to navigate.Established entities like Medici.tv and Met Opera’s On Demand run on subscription models. Deutsche Grammophon’s Stage+ works similarly, and is the only platform for streaming the most recent staging of Wagner’s “Ring” from his home court at the Bayreuth Festival. Building your own digital library of opera on video is more frustrating. The Met, for example, only allows nonsubscribers to rent, but not purchase, individual productions for $4.99.Enter the Naxos label, which has been smartly acquiring the rights to a wide variety of opera productions in recent years and releasing video recordings on DVD and Blu-ray. And now that catalog, which includes shows from Europe’s major houses, is beginning to emerge for digital purchase ($19.99) and rental ($5.99) on Amazon Prime Video. Here are five of Naxos’s best offerings.‘Tosca’ (Dutch National Opera, 2022)Barrie Kosky is one of the most sought-after directors on the international circuit. He’s made his name with comedic and serious rarities alike, but this recent take on Puccini’s bloody shocker shows that his punchy style can work well with the classics, too.There is a notable lack of scenic decoration during the first act’s machinations and romances; we don’t even see what the painter Cavaradossi is working on. But Kosky caps the act with an imagistic coup — and it’s as potent a portrait of Scarpia’s villainy as you’ll find anywhere. Urgently conducted by Lorenzo Viotti and well sung by a youthful cast, Puccini’s thriller here moves with a swiftness that anticipates the slasher flick. And it comes in under two hours.‘Atys’ (Opéra Comique, 2011)Now for something luxurious from the French Baroque. The mythological story told here, with a score by Jean-Baptiste Lully, so entranced Louis XIV that his affection became synonymous with the music. Then the work largely dropped into obscurity, until a 1980s production at the Comique put it back on the map. And in 2011, when a wealthy philanthropist paid for an international touring revival of this sturdy staging, high-definition cameras were ready.The conductor William Christie and his ensemble, Les Arts Florissants, perform the score with a courtly edge that enhances the power (and vengefulness) of Stéphanie d’Oustrac’s take on the goddess Cybèle. And Christie’s players likewise lend a glow to the lovestruck (or mad) exultations present in Bernard Richter’s portrayal of the title character.Sara Jakubiak and Josef Wagner in Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s “Das Wunder der Heliane.”Monika Rittershaus‘Das Wunder der Heliane’ (Deutsche Oper Berlin, 2018)Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s operas have generally struggled to catch on in the repertory, even after getting a quick start during the composer’s starry, youthful ascent in the 1920s. But in recent years, we’ve been gifted with sumptuous recordings of the composer’s lush music dramas — including Simon Stone’s production of “Die Tote Stadt” (documented on a Blu-ray from the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, but not yet streaming).“Das Wunder der Heliane” is even better than Korngold’s rightly famous film scores that followed his move the United States and went on to influence the likes of John Williams. This recording is nearly three hours of orchestral delirium, thanks to the work of the Deutche Oper’s orchestra, under Marc Albrecht. Also no slouch: the American soprano Sara Jakubiak, who proves blazing in the title role. The staging is spare, but the music and acting crackle.‘Mathis der Maler’ (Theater an der Wien, 2012)First came Paul Hindemith’s “Mathis der Maler” Symphony — a nearly half-hour work that drew the ire of Third Reich, and the defense of Wilhelm Furtwängler. Then came the full opera, which premiered in Switzerland in 1938. The stage show winningly incorporates the music of the symphony throughout, but has never dislodged the concert piece in the repertoire, in part because of the prohibitive cost of staging a three-hour opera about the role of art in wartime.In Hindemith’s libretto, the title painter has to choose whether to engage in the 16th-century’s “Peasant’s War.” The seriousness of the subject matter may seem forbidding, but the imagination of Hindemith’s sonic language — dissonant at times, but always rapturous and conceived with care — is so riveting, it actually sells the philosophical material. A straightforward but memorable staging by Keith Warner is likely the only chance many will have to see this work, so its inclusion in Naxos’s catalog is a cause for celebration.Tansel Akzeybek and Vera-Lotte Boecker in Jaromir Weinberger’s “Frühlingsstürme.”Oliver Becker‘Frühlingsstürme’ (Komische Oper, 2020)Now how about an immersion in Weimar operetta? Here, you can take in the last operetta to open during the Weimar Republic, which premiered in January 1933, soon before Nazis did their best to erase a theatrical tradition that was Jewish, gender-fluid and influenced by Black American music of the period.Once again, Barrie Kosky is the director. This was hardly the best operetta production during his long and celebrated decade of leadership at the Komische Oper. It’s not even the best show by Jaromir Weinberger that the theater has put on. (That would be “Schwanda the Bagpiper,” as directed by Andreas Homoki in 2022.)But “Frühlingsstürme” remains a valuable document of Kosky’s efforts to revive Weimar-era works. His playful staging brings a snazzy panache to the comic reversals of fortune and mistaken-identity gambits. You can listen to excerpts that a star singer like Jonas Kaufmann is keen to include in a show-tunes sampler, but the entire show has a fizzy intoxication that excerpts can’t match. More

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      Review: ‘La Cage aux Folles’ Brightens Up Berlin

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      The vivid characters and the infectious melodies of the 1983 musical prove remarkably durable in Barrie Kosky’s madcap production at Komische Oper Berlin.BERLIN — In Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein’s “La Cage aux Folles,” the habitués of the show’s titular nightclub are enumerated as a “girl who needs a shave,” “both the riffraff and the royalty,” “eccentric couples” and “a nun with a Marine.” That description seemed to fit the fashionable and eclectic opening night audience of the Komische Oper Berlin’s new production of the Tony Award-winning 1983 musical.Barrie Kosky’s decade-long reign running the Komische, one of this city’s three world-class opera companies, was a near breathless succession of musical and theatrical high jinks. When Kosky stepped down from his role as the Komische’s artistic director over the summer, his parting gift to the house was a glitzy and unexpectedly moving Yiddish revue. “La Cage,” Kosky’s first production as guest director, premiered on Saturday night and remains in repertory through June 9.Although Kosky has already directed several musicals at the house, this production did mark something of a departure for the company. The “La Cage” score is on the weaker end of the house’s musical theater repertory, which includes “Kiss Me, Kate,” “West Side Story” and “Fiddler on the Roof.” Even so, it was a thrill to hear Herman’s old-fashioned Broadway songs, tunes that swing between razzle-dazzle and sentimentality, performed by a full orchestra. (The most recent Broadway revival of “La Cage,” from 2010, was rescored for eight musicians.) The chameleon-like Orchestra of the Komische Oper Berlin (the same week as the “La Cage” premiere they also performed works by Mozart, Dvorak and Prokofiev) played with polish and panache for the conductor Koen Schoots.Stefan Kurt, right, as Zaza. Kurt’s mix of elegant wit, dramatic flair and emotional vulnerability was never less than captivating.Monika RittershausHerman and Fierstein’s musical is based on Jean Poiret’s 1973 farce about a gay owner of a nightclub and his lover, a drag queen and the revue’s star, whose (heterosexual) son brings his fiancée’s ultraconservative parents for dinner. The production has incredible staying power. Even if the musical no longer feels as revolutionary as it did when it was first performed nearly 40 years ago — the original production is widely considered a milestone in gay theater history — the show’s premise, the vivid characters and the infectious melodies are remarkably durable, or, at least, proved so in Kosky’s madcap production.This energetically choreographed, outrageously costumed and boldly designed staging gave full evidence of Kosky’s shrewd theatrical instincts. One of the first things we see onstage, during the overture, are a number of large silver cages occupied with extras decked-out in colorful plumes and wearing bird masks. The 13-strong “Cagelles,” as the nightclub dancers are called, spend most of the evening energetically twirling, tapping, can-canning and step-dancing clad in pink feathers, fake gold brocade, lace stockings or sparkly underwear. (I’d like to petition the Tonys to consider the choreographer Otto Pichler, assisted here by Mariana Souza, and the costume designer Klaus Bruns as overseas awards candidates.)In contrast to the plumage on display, Rufus Didwiszus’ sets are comparatively simple, even minimal at times, with one notable exception: the gay couple’s apartment. The flamboyant room boasts a sexually explicit illustration by Tom of Finland, large white porcelain vases and couches that are shaped like male genitalia. In addition, there’s an outdoor bistro under a starry set and a series of eclectic curtains with large, neon images of hummingbirds, flamingos and cockatoos that provide trippy backdrops to the kinetic dance numbers.Images of birds and plants provide colorful backdrops to the kinetic dance numbers.Monika RittershausBut “La Cage” requires more than theatrical pizazz. For the piece to work, the camp needs to be counterbalanced by heart, and the cast Kosky has assembled bring both to the stage. The Swiss actor Stefan Kurt, best-known here for his work with Robert Wilson, was captivating as Albin, the drag queen who performs as Zaza. Kurt played him with a touch of Quentin Crisp and a dash of Norma Desmond, but made the role his own by refusing to copy what other actors have done with it. Kurt is not a classical trained singer, and his vocal performance was not as polished as many of the others. But his mix of elegant wit, dramatic flair and emotional vulnerability was never less than captivating.Peter Renz, a former tenor engaged at the Komische, returned to play the dilemma-stricken Georges, the nightclub owner whose loyalty is divided between his lover and his son. He sang with warmth and beauty and acted with the brittle sang-froid of someone trying to maintain sanity in a madhouse. As the couple’s assistant, Jacob, Daniel Daniela Yrureta Ojeda, a Venezuelan dancer who has appeared here in several other Kosky productions, brought impressive physical antics and impeccable comic timing to a wonderfully scene-chewing role. Nicky Wuchinger was comparatively stiff as Georges’ son Jean-Michel, a fairly colorless role, although he crooned and harmonized well with Maria-Danaé Bansen, another young Berliner who lithely danced her way through the production as his fiancée Anne.Helmut Baumann, a local musical theater legend who originated the role of Zaza in “La Cage’s” German premiere in 1985, was cast here as the restaurateur Jacqueline. His entrance won applause from the opening night crowd, which was one of many times throughout the evening that the performance was punctuated by the audience’s vocal enthusiasm. One couldn’t really blame them. With this production, Kosky has turned his former opera house into an inviting place to perch for an evening. It’s the giddiest, most thrilling, most fabulous show in town.La Cage aux FollesThrough June 9. Komische Oper Berlin; komische-oper-berlin.de. More

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      Jakub Hrusa Set to Lead Royal Opera House

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      The young Czech conductor will replace Antonio Pappano, who is heading to the London Symphony Orchestra.Jakub Hrusa leading the New York Philharmonic at David Geffen Hall, in New York, in 2019.Hiroyuki Ito for The New York TimesLONDON — Jakub Hrusa, a rising Czech conductor, on Tuesday was named the music director of the Royal Opera House in London, one of the highest-profile positions in opera.Hrusa, 41, who has been the chief conductor of the Bamberg Symphony in Germany since 2016, will take on the role in September 2025, replacing Antonio Pappano, who announced last year that he was leaving to become the chief conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra after a successful 20-year tenure at the opera house.There has long been speculation in London’s opera world over who would replace Pappano. Neil Fisher, a critic for the Times of London, rounded up a dozen contenders last year, including Edward Gardner, a former music director at English National Opera, and Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, who, until recently, led the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Hrusa was not on the list. But the Czech, who is also the principal guest conductor of the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, where Pappano is the principal conductor, has long received praise.When Hrusa made his New York Philharmonic debut, in 2017, the critic Anthony Tommasini, in The New York Times, wrote: “With his sweeping arm gestures and choreographic swiveling, Mr. Hrusa is a very animated conductor.” He added, “His approach worked, judging by the plush, enveloping sounds and impressive execution he drew from the Philharmonic players in an auspicious debut.”In a highlight at this year’s Salzburg Festival, Hrusa led a breathless rendition of Janacek’s “Kat’a Kabanova,” directed by Barrie Kosky.Critics have also praised Hrusa’s two performances at the Royal Opera House: a 2018 production of Bizet’s “Carmen,” also directed by Kosky, and a run of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” this spring. In The Times of London, Fisher wrote that Hrusa’s conducting of “Lohengrin” “cannily distills the eeriest sonorities of the score, highlighting its bleak beauty.”Hrusa is not the first relatively lesser known option to become the opera house’s music director. When Pappano took the job, in 2002, he came from La Monnaie in Brussels and had little reputation in London at the time.In a news release, Hrusa, who grew up in Brno, the Czech city where Janacek lived, said he was thrilled to accept the position. “I have always dreamt about a long-term relationship with a house where one can reach the highest standards in opera, and I realized very quickly that I adored the whole team of artists and staff at Covent Garden,” he said.Oliver Mears, the director of the Royal Opera, said in the release that everyone at the house had “been hugely impressed by not only his superlative music and theater-making but also by the generosity and warmth of his personality.”On Tuesday, the Royal Opera House detailed some of Hrusa’s early engagements in the new role. In the 2027-28 season, he will conduct Wagner’s four-part “Der Ring des Nibelungen,” with Kosky directing.Pappano described the all-encompassing role of music director last year in an interview with The New York Times: “With all the competition that there is for people’s attention, for fund-raising, even for survival for classical music institutions,” he said, “the job has become much more than just conducting.”A looming challenge for the Royal Opera could be a cut in its budget. The British government is slashing the amount of funding it gives to cultural institutions in London by a total 15 percent, so that it can give more money to arts organization in poorer regions. Last year, the government gave the Royal Opera House £35.8 million, or about $40 million, equivalent to 43 percent of the house’s total income, including for the Royal Ballet. An announcement on future funding is expected this month. More

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      America’s Most Interesting Opera Destination? The Midwest.

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      Barrie Kosky and Yuval Sharon, two of opera’s finest directors, open new productions in Chicago and Detroit.New York City, despite its bona fides as a cultural capital, can be surprisingly provincial when it comes to opera.As ever-fewer international directors pass through with their productions — events that, once upon a time, could reliably be found at Lincoln Center’s festivals or the Brooklyn Academy of Music — and New York City Opera exists as a shell of its former self, the only major player left in town is the Metropolitan Opera, an increasingly adventurous if still conservative house.It’s a different story elsewhere in the United States. While the Met prepares to start its season next week, two other companies opened new productions on Saturday, with imaginative directors who won’t grace the Met stage any time soon but should: at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, a “Fiddler on the Roof” by Barrie Kosky, and at Detroit Opera, a version of “Die Walküre” by Yuval Sharon.I saw both over the weekend, which made for an unlikely pairing: “Fiddler,” Bock and Harnick’s golden-age musical, on Saturday, and the third act of “Walküre,” from Wagner’s “Ring,” on Sunday. But while there were subtle thematic connections between the two, they were more notable for simply happening — the latest examples of conceptual daring and directorial promise beyond New York City limits (among others this season, like productions of Ethel Smyth’s “The Wreckers” in Houston and Dylan Mattingly’s “Stranger Love” in Los Angeles).Kosky’s “Fiddler” staging reveals the musical as the masterpiece that it is: perennially relevant, smartly constructed and richly complicated.Todd RosenbergKosky’s “Fiddler” is an import from the Komische Oper in Berlin, the house he ran for a decade before stepping down this year. It’s both a preview — he will direct one musical each of the next five seasons — and a glimpse at his range as one of Europe’s leading directors, an artist capable of shattering minimalism, in productions like “Kat’a Kabanova” at the Salzburg Festival in August, and archaeological curiosity, in the obscure operettas he has reintroduced to Germany.There are hallmarks of his showman style throughout this “Fiddler,” but perhaps the most Koskyesque accomplishment here is his revealing of the musical as the masterpiece that it is — perennially relevant, smartly constructed and richly complicated — rather than what many critics have seen as borscht belt kitsch. His staging, in which no emotion is ever forced, is funny only in the way that life can be: dark humor in the face of absurdity, joy at a harmless misunderstanding.Most natural, perhaps, is the way in which Kosky’s take on the musical — unaltered, but for welcome Yiddish additions — unfolds as an act of memory, at once melancholy and warm. It begins with something like a summoning of the past: A child (Drake Wunderlich) rolls across the stage on a scooter, beats emanating from his headphones. At the center is a wardrobe; and inside is a violin, on which the boy begins to play the show’s opening theme. He pauses, and the tune continues with a whistle from within.Out from the wardrobe steps Tevye — Steven Skybell, who played the role in the recent Yiddish-language “Fiddler” Off Broadway and who again lends the character the sculptural dimensions of a Shakespeare protagonist — then the rest of the villagers from Anatevka. Among them are a wealth of sympathetic, skilled performers: Debbie Gravitte as a resilient Golde; Lauren Marcus, Austen Danielle Bohmer and Maya Jacobson as her and Tevye’s pathbreaking daughters; Drew Redington as a meek then audacious Motel; Adam Kaplan as a brazen yet desperate Perchik; Michael Nigro as a honeyed Fyedka; and more.Many more: This is a “Fiddler” beyond Broadway proportions, with a cast large enough to fill out a shtetl and a full orchestra, conducted with committed enthusiasm and dancelike flexibility by Kimberly Grigsby. Yet while the forces were operatic, the scenic design, by Rufus Didwiszus, wasn’t; the first act sprang out of and around a unit set of wardrobes and dressers stacked like a barricade, some of their doors and drawers opened to reveal lingering clothes, as if they had been hastily emptied and gathered in a public square. You could imagine it as a memorial.To what? Take your pick. “Fiddler” is specific, a tale of change coming rapidly to the traditions of Anatevka in the early 20th century; yet it has resonated time and again, whether for its themes of rigidity amid progress or for its depictions of intolerance and exile. The last Broadway revival, in 2015, was haunted by the Syrian refugee crisis. This year, it’s impossible to see the show’s characters — inhabitants of present-day Ukraine — haphazardly packing up their lives for an unknown future and not think of the war there.Yuval Sharon’s “The Valkyries,” at Detroit Opera, is presented on a bifurcated stage in which singers perform in front of a green screen, below a video produced live.Mary Jaglowski/Detroit OperaAnd yet Kosky’s staging is also entertaining. Otto Pichler’s choreography, a nod to and break from Jerome Robbins’s original, left the audience on Saturday roaring. And the production’s nearly three hours breeze by. It is the finest “Fiddler” I’ve seen, one that could be adapted with ease and success on Broadway — where, in addition to the Met, Kosky belongs.Sharon is also woefully absent from New York’s stages. The brightest director in the United States, he put on a drive-through “Götterdämmerung” in a Detroit parking garage when live performance was virtually nonexistent during the pandemic and, as artistic director of Detroit Opera, has made that city an opera destination — along with Los Angeles, where his company the Industry has created the most innovative, original productions of recent years.His excerpt from “Die Walküre” — the 85-minute third act, called here “The Valkyries” — reflects Wagner’s ambitions for the work’s stage magic, but also the state of opera performance in our time, by presenting it as a sci-fi movie filmed against a green screen and rendered live with the help of Kaitlyn Pietras and Jason H. Thompson from PXT Studio. Yet a casual audience member could also enjoy it at face value, a self-contained drama with the subtlety and punch of short fiction.The production places the “Ring” in the metaverse, with Valhalla as a digital creation whose back story is recounted by Sigourney Weaver in a video introduction. Having a queen of sci-fi make this cameo is among the show’s campy touches, like Carlos J. Soto’s winking costumes, which suggest “Tron” and its low-budget cousins of the 1970s and ’80s.On the bifurcated stage, singers (accompanied by Andrew Davis leading a reduced but undiminished orchestration by David Carp, to accommodate the theater’s smaller pit) perform in front of the green screen — on green props, and supported by stage hands in green body suits, who, for example, wave capes during the “Ride of the Valkyries.” At the same time, the film, which reflects changes in scale and placement on a digital landscape, is shown above. The singers, especially the soprano Christine Goerke, still earning her title as a reigning Brünnhilde, rise to the challenge of the close-ups with actorly delivery; she, facing an indefinite slumber atop a mountain as punishment, sobs with audibly shallow breathing.At quick glance, Sharon’s production has the appearance of window dressing; the action ultimately unfolds in a conventional way. But, as ever, the medium is the message.“The Valkyries” could be seen as a meditation on opera in the 21st century: the proliferation of video in stagings, as well as pandemic-era livestreams and the genre of studio productions that grew out of them. What, now, is a live performance? Sharon provokes a tension of perception, with the eye and ear unsure of whether to focus on the singers or the screen. What is lost, and gained, in their interplay? He doesn’t offer an answer so much as lay out a balance sheet that the audience is left to settle.If Sharon does make a case, it’s for the durability of an opera’s essence. No matter the format, “Walküre” is a rending portrait of love, family and regret; Sunday’s performance wasn’t any different. And, as in “Fiddler,” the emotional core of “The Valkyries” was drawn out in a way that was unforced and honest, yet stylistically distinct. New York would be lucky to have either show. More