August Freyer News
German organist and composer
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2024-03-22
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2024-02-21 18:49:00
Le nozze di Figaro, Deutsche Oper, 20 February 2024
[…] Marriage of Figaro, a joy to encounter in itself and a nice sequel to Ruth Berghaus’s Barber of Seville across town at the Staatsoper. Friedrich’s productions are gradually making their way to the great opera house in the sky. When I first came to Berlin, a number of his Wagner stagings, for instance, were still in the repertoire; now there are none. This, from 1978, with designs by Herbert Wernicke – like Berghaus’s designer, Achim Freyer, going on to become a notable director in his own right – is certainly worth catching whilst it is still around. For once, I admit it was a relief to see an eighteenth-century society of orders portrayed as it ‘should be’. It is not the case that the drama cannot be reimagined in different settings, nor even that the complexity and hierarchy of such a society need in every case be reproduced (though one […]
2024-02-19 17:22:00
Il barbiere di Siviglia, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 16 February 2024
Count Almaviva – Siyabonga Maqungo Doctor Bartolo – Renato Girolami Rosina – Marina Viotti Don Basilio – Grigory Shkarupa Berta – Adriane Queiroz Figaro – Samuel Hasselhorn Fiorillo – Dionysios Averginos Ambrosio, Notary – Florian Eckhardt Officer – Wolfgang BiebuyckDirector – Ruth BerghausDesigns – Achim FreyerRevival director – Katharina LangStaatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Dani Juris)Staatskapelle BerlinIdo Arad (conductor)Images (from 2010): Monika Rittershaus I see that, in London, Jonathan Miller’s 1987 ENO production of The Barber of Seville is receiving another outing. It seems positively modern, though, at least when it comes to years and performances on the clock, when compared with Ruth Berghaus’s 1968 staging for the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, first seen a little less than midway between the declaration of the German Democratic Republic and the fall of the Berlin Wall and now past 350 outings. In one of these near-miracles impossible fully to explain, though, Berghaus’s production seems […]
2024-01-17 11:48:00
Antikrist, Deutsche Oper, 13 January 2024
[…] as ‘The Great Whore’. The other soloists were excellent too, though, as were the dancers, even if some of the choreography – especially that without music, at the beginning – proved more puzzling than revealing. In that respect, one might say it suited the work. Ersan Mondtag’s production certainly looked good. (The set designs were his too, and he had at least a hand in the costume design.) To me it looked as if Achim Freyer were directing a sequel to La bohème. I am not sure a modern-ish street inhabited by clowns was actually intended as a wry commentary on Langgaard’s claptrap, but to an extent it could be taken as such. What was intended by a car suddenly falling from the sky or the similar aerial suspension of a large figure of a male God with vulva I have no idea, but they gave us something to look […]
2024-01-14 14:18:00
Die Zauberflöte, Deutsche Oper, 11 January 2024
[…] Deutsche Oper Berlin, copyright: Bettina StößImages from 2008, with different cast Premiered on 24 September 1991, six days short of 200 years from the work’s first performance, Günther Krämer’s Magic Flute has done sterling service for the Deutsche Oper. The company would have had more than a year’s worth, if it performed this single work daily without a break, the performance total having reached 379. The work is no stranger to longstanding productions: Achim Freyer’s truly magical staging (I saw it twice in Salzburg) did the rounds for a good few years; David McVicar’s Covent Garden production has been seen regularly, though not so regularly as that, for more than two decades now. Closer to home, August Everding’s tedious offering for the Berlin Staatsoper has been around since 1994 and clocked up 300 in 2021, though it has now been joined in repertoire by a more innovative staging from […]
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