Enrico Calesso / Atsiliepimai

Sabine Mäder 's stage is mostly action-oriented. Only the abode of the four friends in the first picture - not an attic room, but a living container - has its acoustic and scenic pitfalls: the otherwise, in the middle to front stage area, excellent transparency and diction of all singers is in the small cubicle, although mostly wallless rear left, about 4 x 6 m in size, greatly reduced. To compensate for this somewhat remote location, a cameraman ( Oliver Lasch) close-ups of the container residents were made on stage, which are projected onto a surface in the right half of the stage, behind which the "Momus" counter is hidden. Not only is the cameraman's scurrying around annoying, but the transmission is also repeatedly chopped up by dropouts and pixelation. On the part of the leadership, the story is told very clearly and straightforwardly on the action and emotional level, and the latter level is also very carefully designed musically. This is the work of Markus Poschner , who lets the Bruckner Orchestra Linz play music precisely and transparently and of course also has the coordination between the pit and the stage perfectly under control.

Of course, one cannot compete on the same level with the Upper Italian “home” of this opera since 1913 and the luxurious, museum-like staging that has been established there over the last few decades. Hence the production team (staging by Sabine Hartmannshenn , stage by Stefan Heinrichs , costumes by Edith Kollath , light by Herbert Sachsenhofer , dramaturgy by Christoph Blitt) on the certainly not new idea of ​​letting the evening pass in the guise of a theater rehearsal. The emotions and role identification of the performers become more intense and direct from act to act - in any case an expression of careful personal direction. This is framed by parts of the scenery that are eagerly pushed back and forth, only rarely showing their front side, which then gives clear references to the Veronese production mentioned. But here, too, the following applies: the further the evening progresses, the more the scenarios immerse themselves in the reality of the piece; the invocation of Ptah at the end of the first act is still a party, perhaps on the occasion of the first dress rehearsal, where the actress serving Amneris canapèes and the pharaoh's throne is decorated with colorful balloons, the triumphal march, at least its second half, much more serious to the point. Finally, the exit scene is kept in extreme reduction - black curtain border, no Egyptian folklore, Radames on the left, Aida on the right back on the stage, two downlights, and Amneris crouches desperately listening at the front of the ramp - but this again results in maximum concentration on the emotions the immured.

The leading team had already staged four Mozart operas in Linz in recent years. The jubilation and the expected standing ovations were mainly for the musical side. Already with the overture, Markus Poschner showed his unquestionable competence for Mozart - with a beaming face and animating gestures for the ladies and gentlemen of the Bruckner Orchestra Linz, who for their part proved their professional quality right from the start. Already the first applause had frenetic quality. Poschner also understands how to accompany and reinforce the soloists to lead them to special performances. All roles could be satisfactorily to excellently cast by members of the ensemble.

The young, Serbian-Italian director Mario Pavle del Monaco, son of the Serbian mezzo-soprano Dragana del Monaco and grandson of the famous tenor Mario del Monaco, had no ambition to update the long overinterpreted Romeo and Juliet tragedy or to charge it politically. Perhaps that was also due to the difficult conditions in which this production was created. And so he left it at showing an aggressive gang wasting their lives between rum bottles and bullets. Romeo isn't exactly popular either, but is quick to bring a hand grenade. And Julia does not accept the victim role without complaint, but tolerantly.

Since the theater is playing in an alternative location, the Theaterfabrik Blaue Halle, in the district of Dürrbachau anyway, the technical possibilities for the stage are limited. Director Nina Russi is satisfied with two storage containers that are moved, opened and closed again in front of a dark background. In these, next to and in front of it, the action takes place around the protagonist Emilia Marty, the over 300-year-old singer, whose secret the whole opera revolves around. As a child, her father, Emperor Rudolf II's personal physician, tested an elixir on her that keeps people alive for 300 years. Since then she has lived under different names, always with the initials EM. Now, however, in order to regain possession of the recipe for the elixir, she has to help solve a complicated inheritance dispute without revealing her past.

The work formed the first part of a double evening with which the Würzburg Mainfranken Theater started its new season. Because the main building in the city center is still being renovated, one is currently playing a little outside, in the Blaue Halle theater factory, which a local thermal box company, which has been particularly flourishing since the outbreak of the pandemic, is making available to the theater. Of course, there is no stage machinery there, but the orchestra pit and the uniform stage design, which in this production is dominated by a large wall painting with Cupid and Lustknaben in a kitschy baroque style, have a considerable width (design: Pascal Seibicke ).