Mozart's “Figaro” at the Berlin State Opera: Actually a cheek

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He does it.

Because he wants to.

And because he can.

It's that simple in the case of Daniel Barenboim, who has been the virtually unrestricted ruler of the Berlin State Opera since 1992.

Mind you: 29 years in a public position that shouldn't actually be a hereditary estate.

With a contract until 2027. The boss creates, and everyone else follows.

Even if he can't think of anything anymore.

But: a new Mozart / da Ponte trilogy!

Always works.

During the fall of the Berlin Wall, Barenboim recorded the trilogy with the Berliner Philharmoniker for Erato.

In 1999 the Trias came out for the first time, beginning with a boring “Marriage of Figaro” by Thomas Langhoff, under his staff leadership at the State Opera.

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The hippy-stylish “Così fan tutte” as the finale had already been arranged by the operatic debutante Doris Dörrie in 2001 - Langhoff had since been discontinued due to a similarly flat “Don Giovanni”.

In 2008 there was a new "Don Giovanni" produced with La Scala in Milan.

Barenboim, of course, canceled his conducting (Asher Fisch stepped in) because he had had a quarrel with his artistic director and director Peter Mussbach and he was gone very quickly.

Daniel Barenboim has been music director at the State Opera for 29 years.

It will remain so until 2027

Source: CHRISTIAN MANG

Significantly, the current program does not mention this;

only the Claus Guth “Don Giovanni”, who was later elegantly taken over from Salzburg as a replacement, is mentioned.

In 2015 there was also a new, jolly “Figaro” by Jürgen Flimm (who conducted, almost as old-fashioned as Barenboim, Gustavo Dudamel), which has already been disposed of again, Berlin has it.

Because the house god craved Mozart recycling a third time.

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Incidentally, Mozart Maniac is also artistic director Matthias Schulz.

And that's why, more or less fully staged, productions of Mozart's early works “Idomeneo” and “Mitridate” that have not yet been shown due to the pandemic are slumbering in the novelty box.

There is also a new “Così” stuck there, which was actually planned for last Easter - as the prelude to another Da Ponte trilogy with Barenboim at the desk and the French director Vincent Huguet.

Does Barenboim stop doing homework?

In this Mozart traffic jam, all of this has now been overtaken by Huguet's very fresh “Figaro”.

Of course only streamed, because the live repetition planned for April 2nd as part of the Berlin pilot test project had to be canceled first.

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Already after the first, only tired, overture bars you ask yourself: Does someone like Barenboim stop doing his homework at all?

Does this toothless, softened, creamy, purring Seventies Mozart really have to be?

Welcome to Figaro's kitchen-cum-living-room: Scene from Vincent Huguet's "Figaro" production

Source: MATTHIAS BAUS

Can't even a great conductor pick up grades from scratch?

Nobody expects Harnoncourt knowledge or Jacobs wisdom from him.

But at least a new twist, a different accent, a brave approach to speed!

Is that too much?

Well, the almost contourless sounding Staatskapelle was dimmed acoustically extremely in favor of the singers in the Medici TV broadcast.

But what came from them was not very outstanding either.

The majority were well-known at the state opera.

It seems that the line-ups are also becoming more sparse with the repetitions of Mozart.

Gyula Orendt would be a good, rebellious Figaro, for the Count his light baritone lacks volume and contour.

Riccardo Fassi, on the other hand, made little impression as Figaro, but sang well.

Even the hyped Elsa Dreisig would cut a better figure than Susanna, as a countess she is pale, too little elegantly linear.

As Susanna, on the other hand, wearing a mop as a wig, the permanently employed Nadine Sierra liked to clink metallic.

Emily D'Angelo leaves little more than a correct Cherubino impression.

And the only exciting persona - the noble Waltraud Meier as Marcellina - had been tacitly replaced by the proven Katharina Kammerloher due to a knee problem.

Stephan Rügamer blared his Basilio with a penetrating Teuton accent.

In the mini cameo as a notary, Barenboim's ex-Tristan Siegfried Jerusalem was looking for his grades.

In the dead castle of the eighties: Gyula Orendt as Count Almaviva

Source: MATTHIAS BAUS

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In the nineties there was a brightly colored, but also funny, Da Ponte trilogy by John Dew in Leipzig.

There was the flashy zeitgeist look, but only the prelude to a fireworks display from Regiegags.

In the current Berlin case, however, eighties nostalgia with lots of purple and parachute silk is already the end of the ideas.

In ugly undefined rooms, a little kitchen-cum-living room where Figaro distributes gazpacho, some boudoir with a reptile-print bedspread, a rest of the office with Warhol's behind and Rubik's Cube on the desk, and finally a potted plant garden, nothing takes place that can be called personal direction.

Not to mention a concept.

There is emptiness standing around, unimaginative, charm-free, joke-dry.

This is also an achievement, in a way.

But what's the use of all that grumbling?

The big name is still pulling.

Two foreign classical channels streamed, and a DVD company recorded the sad gloom in Mozart's name.

So many artists currently have nothing to do, suffer from professional bans and a lack of assistance.

This boring routine “Figaro” seems doubly frivolous.