Lifelong opera stan projecting my sociological and queer perspective onto what’s playing on Berlin‘s big and small classical stages.
Deutsche Oper Berlin
Spuck’s HOLLÄNDER strips away excess and focuses on the psychological and emotional turmoil at the opera’s core. The production’s minimalism enhances rather than diminishes the drama, drawing the audience into a world where obsession, fate, and redemption blur together.
Staatsoper Berlin
This concertante performance offered a glimpse into how operas were staged in the mid-18th century, a stark contrast to the productions we are accustomed to today.
Philharmonie Berlin
The Berlin Philharmonic’s Paradise Lost? Biennale explores the climate crisis through music. From Brett Dean’s fiery chaos to Copland’s pastoral calm, this concert made us hear nature’s beauty, fragility, and fate.
Teatro Colón
12,000 kilometers from Europe’s symphonic capitals, the Colón is completely at home in this repertoire, with an entire hall of people tapping along to Schubert, Beethoven, and Strauss with unrestrained delight.
Staatsoper Berlin
This ELEKTRA doesn’t just tell a story of vengeance and trauma—it makes you feel the weight of generations of women bound by duty, grief, and the remnants of a shattered world.
Deutsche Oper Berlin
By placing TURANDOT within a rigidly controlled dystopia—where press is restricted, police surveil the public, and dissent is crushed—the opera’s otherwise fantastical premise gains a sense of political logic.
Staatsoper Berlin
Visually, the production is rich with unsettling imagery that redefines Rusalka’s nature. Though traces of her original water-nymph identity remain, here, she is something far more uncanny.
Staatsoper Berlin
Beneath the aristocratic elegance and comedic disguises, this is an opera about people—flawed, passionate, and full of contradictions. It speaks of trust, longing, and the challenge of overcoming one’s own fears.
Staatsoper Berlin
Thematically, FIN DE PARTIE explores the absurdity of life, isolation and dependency, the cyclical nature of existence, and the complex dynamics of physical disability and human relationships.
Staatsballett Berlin
What I most enjoy about Forsythe‘s work is the androgyny of the choreographies: often, male and female dancers make very similar movements, equally fierce and fluid, breaking some gendered conventions the perception of dance.
Komische Oper Berlin
This refreshing staging dismantles well-worn BOHÈME clichés, peeling away layers like an onion to expose the opera’s essential human truths: gone are the picturesque Parisian rooftops, falling snow, and festive Christmas scenes.
English National Opera
Those familiar with the TV show will find that this production instills the same levels of terror and discomfort: the plight if the Handmaids, the ruthlessness of Gilead‘s commanders, the ambivalent complexity of the Aunts, and the rallying cry of hopeful rebellion are bone-chillingly depicted.