Reimann - Lear (Berlin, 2026)

Aribert Reimann - Lear

Komische Oper Berlin, 2026

Nicholas Carter, Bar­rie Kos­ky, Scott Hendricks, Di­mi­try Iva­shchen­ko, Phi­lipp Mei­er­hö­fer, Jo­han­nes Dunz, Ivan Tur­šić, Gün­ter Pa­pen­dell, Ar­yeh Nuss­baum­ Co­hen, Brenton Ryan, Ro­sie Al­dri­dge, Ni­cole Che­va­lier, Pen­ny So­fro­nia­dou, Dag­mar Man­zel, Simon Wallfisch

Flughafen Templehof, Hangar 4 - 18th September 2026

Where else but in Germany and Berlin would you get to see two operas of such great extremes from one night to the next? This week at the Komische Oper you can see the full horror of madness, violence and the destruction of any basic human values in Aribert Reimann's Lear one night and the next evening at the Deutsche Oper experience the delirious eccentricities of Stockhausen's Mittwoch aus Licht that includes a flying Helicopter String Quartet and makes the case for music uniting the cosmos in peace, love and understanding. I think this is what you would call #Operamaxxing if opera ever were to become a modern trend, which is highly unlikely. Anyway I think Wagner did it 150 years ago, long before social media, when he created the Bayreuth Festival.

A new production of Aribert Reimann’s opera adaptation of Shakespeare's 'King Lear' in Berlin was always going to be an exceptional event but you couldn't help having a few minor misgivings in advance about some of the choices made for the staging. Those would definitely be minor misgivings though as, no matter what, Lear is one of the greatest operas ever written, or at least based on one of the greatest plays ever written and certainly one of the greatest adaptations of Shakespeare in opera. I'm prepared to stand over that first statement about it being one of the greatest operas ever written though, certainly based on how it eventually played out here in Barrie Kosky's new production for the Komische Oper. This turned out to be one of the most remarkable events I have ever experienced.

There was however initially just a flicker of doubt beforehand about whether Scott Hendricks would be able to carry off a major role like this. Hendricks has been variable in my experience: I don't think he is suited for the specific requirements and challenges of a Verdi or a Puccini baritone, but I have seen him give an exceptional performances in Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel, and more recently as Alberich in the Das Rheingold of Romeo Castellucci's aborted Ring Cycle at La Monnaie in Brussels. His committed performance there suggested that he could certainly give Reimann a go, even if you couldn't quite envision how it would pan out since Reimann really is a challenge on a whole other level. 

The other minor concern - or maybe rather call it an unknown - was the choice of the Komische Oper to stage the work in Hangar 4 of the now disused Templehof airport. Certainly the first of impression entering the venue was that it was going to be hard to fill that vast stage. Not so much a concern with the music filling the cavernous hall, it being more of a necessity as Lear has an orchestral volume level that few can match, not least with a whole battery of drummers and percussionists at the opposite end of the stage from the orchestra. 'Blow wind, blow' was certainly always going to blow you away.

Also not ideal was recognition that the singers would all be wearing microphones to effectively project to the audience in the round but in practice, with the volume this needs to be sung at, you could hear most of the performers acoustically - at least from where I was sitting - and be able to locate their voice directionally. Either that or someone (that would be Holger Schwark) was doing an incredible job on the sound design. One thing I had no concerns about whatsoever, aside from the unquestionable quality of the work itself, was the direction of Barrie Kosky. This I believe was the first time out of his many productions that I have seen where I have actually been present at the live performance. His recent work in particular has been outstanding (Die Frau ohne Schatten) and there a good reason why he was chief director at the Komische for ten years and clearly still has a good relationship with the Berlin opera house.

With Kosky at the helm, any minor misgivings soon came to nothing once the performance, the drama, the music and the extraordinary stage production pulled you in for a two hour and twenty minutes performance with no interval and no respite. And it didn't take long to reach a point of total immersion in the drama partly because Shakespeare's introduction of the characters is so immediate and partly since Reimann's focussed concentration of the work retains the full essence of the power of that opening scene between Lear and his three daughters (and across the whole opera, it has to be said) in as full an adherence to Shakespeare's words in intent and translation as it's possible to achieve. Scott Hendricks rose to the challenges, impressing immediately, his interpretation superb and committed. He was helped somewhat by the fact that the role is mostly Sprechtgesang, but that's not to say that it doesn't still have considerable challenges.

Considerable challenges for everyone, in fact. It soon became obvious to me - although having seen and reviewed two different previous productions of the work (Munich, 2021 and Hamburg, 2014) I already knew this - that Reimann's vocal writing for this work is one of the most impressive in all opera. Bel canto it is not, Wagnerian not so much either, but perhaps the difference is that it's one where the voice is used to its fullest expression across every single role, across every single note in the opera. Every voice approaches a controlled scream, as if on the edge of hysteria and madness, but it's also completely musical within the range that the composer pitches it. The orchestra is similarly charged and pitched, expressive but filling in all those nuances that might otherwise be lost in the condensing of the work, instead only making it even more dark and disturbing.

Dark and disturbing. I wish I had the ability or space to analyse just what Shakespeare achieves here in 'King Lear', but it's not really pertinent to the opera. In opera performance - modernised here only in so far as contemporary formal costumes and suits for businessmen/royalty and modern combat gear and guns for the troops - it's about how much the work can connect to the world we see around us, a work that speaks of the kind of people in power where madmen lead the blind. It's all there in Shakespeare and a director has all they need there without having to add a great deal more. Reimann himself had experience of a madman leading the blind. It's said that the thunderous noise that the percussionists and orchestra make during the 'Blow wind, blow' storm scene that sounds like the end of the world was inspired by the composer's memory of the air raid bombing and destruction of Berlin at the end of the war. It really does sound like it.

Barrie Kosky doesn't have the luxury of a lot of props and sets in this venue where the performance is essentially in the round, but he has a stage, he has brilliant singers and, as if they don't have enough to contend with, he makes sure they cover every inch of the vast platform with constant movement. Brenton Ryan as Edmund relishes the wide space, casting his arrogantly evil 'who's-going-to-take-me-on’ challenge to the audience as he strides from end to end, from corner to corner, but the same applies to everyone in the cast. It's not just choreography to make sure that they reach everyone in the round - which is essential nonetheless - but it applies to the pace of the opera, to the intensity of their mad designs and their headlong rush into self-destruction.

Minimalist through necessity, this was not however anything like a static performance, and if the venue ensured that this couldn't be a traditional proscenium arch, park-and-bark opera performance, it's all the better for it. A raised platform sweeping across the stage is well used for declamation, for running lengths, for Lear's men to gather around and carouse. Blocks of tiles are lifted from the stage to create holes, pits and graves, there is superb use of spot lighting, smoke fills the stage at the scene of utter madness - madder than any mad scene in bel canto - and there are thunderous thuds of the boots of troops piling onto the stage as the whole play and opera collapses under the weight of its characters violent excesses, or under Reimann's merciless score maybe. It's an incredible performance of an incredible work of opera, viscerally experienced in an overpowering account conducted by Nicholas Carter in this unusual but suitable venue.

I'm not sure there is any value in enumerating and listing the qualities of each of the performers individually. Every one of them, without exception, gave an impressive performance. Goneril (Ro­sie Al­dri­dge), Regan (Ni­cole Che­va­lier, who has also sung Reimann's Medea at the Komische) and Cordelia (Pen­ny So­fro­nia­dou) are a formidable trio as Lear's daughters, a force unlike any other in opera. Scott Hendricks was authoritative as their father, unquestionably putting in the best performance I've ever seen from him, this opera (and Kosky's direction I would say) undoubtedly bringing the best out of him. 

Since I've started then, the other family trio of Gloucester, Edgar and Edmund are less elaborated upon than in Shakespeare, but this subplot remains an important element that spawns even greater acts of atrocity. All the performances were notable for making this count, with Gün­ter Pa­pen­dell as Gloucester; the extraordinary Ar­yeh Nuss­baum­ Co­hen's Edgar challenging the patriarchal order in his queered transformation as Poor Tom; and Brenton Ryan as Edmund bringing full dramatic force that pushes the work to greater levels of horror and inhumanity, resulting in Regan chewing and spitting out Gloucester's eyeball. Chevalier's Regan was already showing twitchy signs of madness in first scene, and it's clear that power only intensifies it, which is indeed part of the premise of the play. Maybe not chewing eyeballs, but we have all heard of similar abuses and worse atrocities taking place in the modern world. This Lear offers us no comfortable assurances - and I can't say Stockhausen's vision of the communion of those opposing forces of good and evil made a convincing counter-argument the following evening in Berlin.

External links: Komische Oper

Mussorgsky - Boris Godunov (New York, 2021)

Modest Mussorgsky - Boris Godunov

The Metropolitan Opera, New York - 2021

Sebastian Weigle, Stephen Wadsworth, René Pape, Ain Anger, Maxim Paster, David Butt Philip, Aleksey Bogdanov, Ryan Speedo Green, Miles Mykkanen, Richard Bernstein, Bradley Garvin, Tichina Vaughn, Brenton Ryan, Kevin Burdette, Erika Baikoff, Megan Marino, Eve Gigliotti, Mark Schowalter

The Met: Live in HD - 9th October 2021

The opportunity to see a staged performance of the original 1869 version of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov - even in a streamed live performance from the Met in New York - is something that should not be missed. Up until recently, you would have been more likely to see the 1872 revised version or a hybrid of both versions, but rarely nowadays (I haven't seen or heard one in my time watching opera) the Rimsky-Korsakov version. Watching Mussorgsky's original version of the work in a staging at the Paris opera in 2018, was something of a revelation and a sign that it could very easily become the canonical version of the work. The Met's production consolidates that reputation somewhat, but there are still a few reservations about how to best present this problematic opera.

There are certainly valid reasons why the later revisions of the opera were more favoured. Obviously no one wants to lose the additional music and scenes that Mussorgsky composed for the 1872 version, but principally there's the fact that the original wasn't considered to hold together dramatically. There's validity in that and it is something that is confirmed by Stephen Wadsworth's production, but what is also confirmed from the Met's performance of the work - as it was in Ivo van Hove's rather more successful staging of this version in Paris - is that even in its 'embryonic' form Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov is still indisputably a masterpiece.

The Met production consequently struggles to find a way to reconcile this contradiction between the quality of the music and the challenges of representing the dramatic material. Where Ivo van Hove was perhaps more successful than Wadsworth is in the efforts he makes to make the stakes of the drama feel more real - and indeed dramatic - by presenting it in a more recognisable context than the Russian history of the years 1598 to 1605. There are obvious connections to the modern world that can be made in a ruler's handling and manipulation of the people, and how that reliance on populism can turn just as quickly against him, but Wadsworth's production - like most 'safe' Met productions - makes no effort to even hint that there is still relevance in this situation today.

The closest we get to a representation of the context of the rule of Boris Godunov within the tides of history is one that fortunately, Mussorgsky (or perhaps more accurately, Pushkin, the author of the original work the opera is based on) included with the character of Pimen, the monk who is compiling a book of Russian history. This is presented as a huge oversize volume and maps spread out on the stage, testifying to the importance of this period of Russian history, its significance and the lessons we can learn from it. Some indication of where that could go might have made more of this, but it's effective on its own terms.

As generally is the stage production as a whole, setting the mood well and generally matching the dark tone of the work, filling the huge Met stage with the chorus, putting the all-important Russian folk onto the stage. Inevitably, despite the high production values, it does feels a little am-dram period, static and 'stagy' in its depictions of the drama. It doesn't really bare any teeth to really get across just how turbulent and violent this post Ivan the Terrible period of history is. Where is it perhaps most lacking however is in its failure to make the opera work on a dramatic level. That might be as much to do with the nature of the original 1869 version as it is with any deficiencies in the direction, but it still feels dramatically disjointed and incomplete.

Part of the problem for that could be down to the fact that Wadsworth's production was originally created at the Met for performances of the longer 1872 version, so in parallel with the removal of Mussorgsky's added scenes, the production also suffers the same cuts. I don't know whether Wadsworth was involved in the reworking of the cut-back production, there would certainly be some necessary changes made. There is perhaps an extended role for the Holy Fool, present spinning and whirling, mocking Boris even in his coronation scene, a representation of his own folly and madness, an attempt to give the drama additional weight by tying it into the dark Shakespearean horrors of Macbeth and King Lear.

Whether the stage production satisfies or not, the success of the production is nonetheless assured under the musical direction of conductor Sebastian Weigle. Musically its an absolute treat, if somewhat heavy going in its unwavering dark lugubrious tone that plays out for nearly two and a half hours without intermission. If the dramatic representation doesn't beat Boris Godunov down into submission to his fate, the music certainly does, and so too - all importantly - does the chorus. The work of the chorus is simply outstanding, ensuring that the solemn heft of the work carried the necessary weight and depth that was clearly audible in its impact, even in its livestream broadcast.

(On a side note, the quality of these broadcast livestreams - from the Met, Covent Garden and the Paris Opera as well - has improved considerably over the years with stunning HD quality images and powerful sound recording, with no more stream interruptions and breakdowns of communication. Alongside some good camera work - the Met's production directed well for the screen as usual by Gary Halvorson - that captures angles and closeups, it's becoming a great way to experience live opera in a time of restricted travel).

The quality of the musical performance and chorus certainly played an important part, but good principal casting and singing can make all the difference to any failings in the dramatic presentation. That was certainly the case here with René Pape singing the role of Boris. It's the performance of an experienced bass with great technique who also has the maturity to bring real human emotion to characters like Boris just as he has done with Philippe II in Verdi's Don Carlos. He puts real dramatic weight and character behind Boris, savouring the beauty and conflict of the role and Mussorgsky's extraordinary writing for it.

Pape's tormented magisterial performance is supported by similarly fine performances from Ain Anger as Pimen and Maxim Paster as Shuisky, both bringing long previous experience of heavyweight Russian opera and indeed prior experience of these Mussorgsky roles to similar effect. Supporting roles were also well handled, from Miles Mykkanen's Holy Fool to an enjoyable performance from Ryan Speedo Green as Varlaam, his reading of the ukaz, the wanted edict for the Pretender Grigoriy, enlivening a scene that can otherwise seem random and at odds with the tone of the rest of the work. All of this went a considerable way towards bringing across the sheer brilliance of this great opera despite some minor reservations about the stage production and direction.

Links: Metropolitan Opera, The Met: Live in HD 2021-22 season