Organization

Conductor

Conductor (+1)

Ivan Repušić

Stage director

Kasper Holten

Set designer

Set designer (+2)

Steffen Aarfing

Costume designer

Lighting designer

Lighting designer (+2)

Jesper Kongshaug

Chorusmaster

Conductor (+2)

Jeremy Bines

Bass (+3)

Albert Pesendorfer

Henry the Fowler

Tenor

Attilio Glaser

Lohengrin

Soprano (+1)

Flurina Stucki

Elsa of Brabant

Mezzo-soprano (+3)

Anna Smirnova

Ortrud

Baritone (+5)

Thomas Lehman

The king's herald

Tenor (+1)

Patrick Cook

First nobleman of Brabant

Tenor (+3)

Kieran Carrel

Second nobleman of Brabant

Baritone (+3)

Kyle Miller

Third nobleman of Brabant

Baritone (+2)

Daniel Nicholson

Fourth nobleman of Brabant

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Orchestra

Orchester der Deutschen Oper Berlin

Chorus

Choir of the Deutsche Oper Berlin

Baritone (+4)

Thomas Johannes Mayer

Fredrick of Telramund

Soprano

Andrea Schwarzbach

Second noble page

Mezzo-soprano

Cordula Messer

Third noble page

Martin Gantner

Stephanie Lloyd

First noble page

Natalie Buck

Angelika Nolte

Mezzo-soprano (+1)

Kristina Griep

Saskia Klumpp

Fourth noble page

Mezzo-soprano (+2)

Senta Aue

Election campaign in Brabant - Kasper Holten stages Wagner's LOHENGRIN as a timeless political power game: Putin arm-wrestling and digging up an antique amphora, Putin piloting a fire-fighting plane, not to forget the picture with the Siberian tiger! Putin diving, rock climbing, driving race cars and trying to squeeze a frying pan. Whether he succeeded in the latter is not documented, but that's not the point. What counts is the pose, the staging of the hero. The associated message is of course: If you want the radiant winner at the head of the state, don't ask where he came from or how he gained power, because he wants to lead you to salvation. Some politicians who beamed brightest, most confidently into the cameras in this country are no longer in office because we asked about their past and unearthed uncomfortable truths. "If you recognize him, he must pull away from you". If you imagine Lohengrin as one of those politicians who has mastered the media gesture and uses the strongest images and legends to build up a salvation myth around himself, you can easily see him as a power-political phony who senses his chance to create a new one in shattered German lands State to establish a new system, a new ideology. One can find an astonishing number of passages in Wagner's text and music that would support such a reading. Let's take the ban on asking questions, for example: Elsa's life is in danger and she is accused of murdering her brother Gottfried. Lohengrin offers her his help, but by no means unconditionally. Before he fights for her, he proposes a deal: she should marry him but never ask who he is. Of course she agrees, what else can she do? A true hero might have chosen a different order. Elsewhere, too, Lohengrin proves to be a not entirely fair partner to Elsa: he allays her panic that he might leave her again: she needn't worry if she just does what he says. A little later he reveals that he planned to stay only a year and then return to his homeland. He wasn't concerned with the woman, but with the position that she could create for him. His goal was the political game. Elsa was the stage on which he made his grand entrance. It was quite simply campaigning in Brabant. Of course, the penchant for political calculation does not make Lohengrin per se a schemer like Jago; this role is more played by Ortrud, who, as the young ambitious man’s adversary, fights to preserve the old order in the state – with her husband Telramund at his head. But to see the Swan Knight as a thoroughbred politician who is idolized despite his obvious tricks illustrates that strategic political manipulation is often perceived as a necessary tool in statecraft. Even openly hypocritical demonstrations of steadfastness, vitality and strength can mean far more to the easily influenced fearful citizen than integrity and utopian do-goodism. One could find the media hero Lohengrin sympathetic and the power struggle sporty if war weren't threatening and the devastating battle cries weren't already being heard. Given the bloodthirsty belligerence expressed in Wagner's work, and given the fact that whoever wins the election, whoever it is, will lead thousands of men to war and widow women, given the delusion that war an honorable undertaking, a worthy adventure for young men, immediately flags down every downplaying gesture towards public misleading. When a war is launched and a life-and-death struggle is called for, along the lines of “whoever is not with us is against us”, principles of common sense political judgment are put to the test, whether it is a democratic state or not an authoritarian state that pretends to be concerned about the social welfare of its citizens. Elsa understood that. She sees through Lohengrin, she questions him, exposes his narcissistic striving for power, even if she sees no alternative for her country, even if there is no successor to the ruler of Brabant given Gottfried's disappearance. If the convicted hero wants to remain in power, he must develop serious intentions and prove himself as a self-proclaimed protector of the people or in other cases as a "flawless democrat", because from now on he will be under surveillance. He must assert himself without the armor of myth and renounce the charisma of being guided by a foreign power. And then we'll see.

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