Opera's Mother of the Year

The Komische Oper Berlin kicks off its 2017 season of Backstage artists' talks this evening with a visit from Aribert Riemann, whose 2010 opera Medea will premiere at the house in late May. 

In the first of three evenings dedicated to the work and the creative process behind the production, the composer will discuss his version of the Greek tragedy, adapted from a seldom-performed tragedy by Austrian playwright Franz Grillparze (1821). The Komische Oper and the Berlin composer have a long history together. Reimann's Lear has been heard here in two different production (from 1983 and 2009), the more recent being former intendant Andreas Homoki's penetrating and minimal staging. 

Medea was enthusiastically welcomed at the Wiener Staatsoper in 2010, a surprising coup for a contemporary work (the Vienna audience is notoriously conservative). Reviewing a DVD of Marc-Arturo Marelli's premiere production, Gramophone wrote:

"Reimann’s music is much closer to older-style German operatic modernism – Alban Berg, Bernd Alois Zimmermann – than to the radicalism of Karlheinz Stockhausen or Helmut Lachenmann: and Medea follows the line of Reimann’s earlier operatic success, Lear (1978), written for Fischer-Dieskau, which had a London production by ENO in 1989. The vocal writing is predominantly forceful, often florid, but softening into a gentler lyricism from time to time, while the orchestral contribution is mainly abrasive, occasionally restrained."

A further three Backstage talks between now and the new production premiere will feature the Australian stage director Benedict Andrews, main singers and prized KOB ensemble members Günter Papendell and Nicole Chevalier (pictured above), and conductor Steven Sloane. 

6:30 pm 

Komische Oper Berlin

Behrenstraße 55-57

Upcoming dates: March 21, May 2 & May 13