“Turandot” in tropical temperatures, symphony concert in the midday heat. The “opera for everyone” has attracted thousands of people to Berlin. There is a celebrated reunion.
The spectacle “Opera for All” attracted numerous fans of classical music to the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden at the weekend.
According to information from Sunday, the State Opera counted around 22,000 visitors at the opera evening with Giacomo Puccini’s last opera “Turandot” and the concert with Robert Schumann’s Fourth Symphony and Peter Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony.
At the concerts on Sunday on Bebelplatz next to the opera house, there was also a reunion that was enthusiastically celebrated even in the midday heat: for the first time after his cancellations due to illness, General Music Director Daniel Barenboim conducted the Staatskapelle, the orchestra of the State Opera. The 79-year-old conducted while sitting. Barenboim and the Staatskapelle thanked him for the ovations with the polonaise from Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin”.
Zubin Mehta celebrated
The square was already full of people on Saturday evening. They followed the live broadcast of the premiere of “Turandot” under the musical direction of Zubin Mehta (86), who was celebrated together with the orchestra. The chorus, which is very busy in this opera, was also given an ovation, as were the solo parts. Elena Pankratova sang the title role of the man-killing princess. Yusif Eyvazov as Calaf not only convinced with his version of “Nessun dorma!”, the most famous aria of the opera.
Philipp Stölzl staged
Philipp Stölzl was responsible for the staging and stage design, who also had to accept boos for his interpretation. He lets the evening be accompanied by a giant marionette. However, their gradual decline from the beautiful image of the princess to the six-armed monster is often distracting and sometimes even disrupts the music with a bang.
The director (“Nordwand”, “Schachnovelle”) has already visualized the Rammstein song “Du hast” and realized the “Stripped” video of the Berlin band, which is controversial because of film material by Nazi icon Leni Riefenstahl. In his “Turandot” version, he lets the choir celebrate her father’s dictatorial system in oppressive scenes.
The events have been celebrated by thousands of guests since 2007. After the Corona years, this time there was no limited seating capacity and tickets were not compulsory. (dpa)