Organization

Singer

Bass-baritone

David Lagares

Servant

Video designer

Sarah Derendinger

Tenor

Josep Fadó

Jakob Glock

Doctor

Mezzo-soprano

Agnieszka Rehlis

The Abbess

Olesya Petrova

Baritone

Leigh Melrose

Ruprecht

Dimitris Tiliakos

Soprano

Ausrine Stundyte

Renata

Elena Popovskaya

Dmitrij Golovnin

Agrippa von Nettelsheim

Vsevolod Grivnov

Silent

Ernst Alisch

Count Heinrich

Gerardo Bullón

Mathias

Méphistophélès

Dmitry Ulyanov

Johann Faust

Bass

Mika Kares

Inquisitor

Pavel Daniluk

El Padre

Stage director

Calixto Bieito

Conductor

Gustavo Gimeno

Lighting designer

Franck Evin

Costume designer

Ingo Krügler

Set designer

Rebecca Ringst

Dramaturge

Beate Breidenbach

Chorus master

Andrés Máspero

Nino Surguladze

The Inn Hostess

The Inn keeper in Köln

Estíbaliz Martyn

Novicia I

Anna Gomà

Novicia II

Opernhaus Zürich

Teatro Real de Madrid

Others

Coro Intermezzo

Orchestra

Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid

Russian

The Fiery Angel

Madrid

Spain

Live from the Teatro Real in Madrid, an adaptation of Prokofiev’s flamboyant masterpiece by the ever-radical Calixto Bieito.

An event. Since its premiere in 1954, more than a year after Prokofiev’s death, the critics have deemed The Fiery Angel to be his most ambitious and powerful opera, with orchestral writing of rare density. The Russian composer and conductor was inspired by the 1907 novel of the same name by the poet Valery Briousov, one of the leading lights of Russian symbolism.

In 16th century Germany, Renata, a mysterious young girl, believes the devil has appeared to her in the guise of an angel of light, seducing her into the practice of witchcraft and spells. From this novel about passionate, spiritual love bordering on madness and in which reality and fantasy merge, Sergei Prokofiev creates an opera full of lyrical force and nightmarish pandemonium.

 

DESCENT INTO HELL

Calixto Bieito offers a very contemporary rereading, transposing the story to the present day and depicting the everyday life of a young woman suffering from extreme psychic disorders. A devastating inner journey, “involving schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, trauma, anxiety and depression – all very common phenomena in our time,” says the Spanish director. “We are probing the unfamiliar world of mental illness.” Hence the astonishing scenography of his adaptation, in which a cube several storeys high set on a rotating stage represents Renata’s psyche. “We move through the spaces of her memories, we see her fears, her pain, the labyrinth of her soul. The cube will increasingly dissolve as the drama plays out, just as Renata’s brain explodes at the end or, to put it another way, she becomes increasingly dissociated from reality as she finally loses all her bearings.”

Seldom performed because of its complexity, Prokofiev’s work is a genuine event whenever it finds creators that are equal to its demands, which are served here by two soloists who truly inhabit their role: Lithuanian soprano Aušrinė Stundytė and British baritone Leigh Melrose.

Teatro Real

Sala Principal

The Weimar Republic, oasis of liberty and cradle of extremism, welcomed -  with a varying degree of scandal - such radical operas as the blasphemous Sancta Susanna  of  Paul Hindemith,  the atonal  and anti- militarist Wozzeck of  Alban Berg, or the  multi-racial  and jazz like Jonny spielt auf of  Ernst Krenek. In spite of this background, not even the mediation of the prestigious conductor Bruno Walter was sufficient to bring The Fiery Angel by Sergei Prokofiev to the stage of the Deutsche Oper of Berlin. The constant setbacks with respect to the work led the composer to desist with its debut and re-use the principal musical material in the third of his symphonies, first heard in Paris in 1929.  Furthermore, the rise of Nazism in Germany and the hardening of cultural politics in the Soviet Union also delayed the opening of The Fiery Angel. In the end, it opened posthumously in 1954 at the Teatro La Fenice of Venice.  The production by Calixto Bieito extracts all the potential from this work in a most convincing and spine-chilling way. The action takes place in a closed society of the 1950s, taking this story of witchcraft, sex and religion to the realism of imitation leather sofas, crochet cardigans, medical abuse and child molestation.

Photos