Theater Dortmund / Rezensionen

Two big opera premieres and in between a sound project with around 800 participants that stretches from the pedestrian zone to the opera house: the new director Heribert Germeshausen has big plans for his start at the Dortmund Opera on the opening weekend, and in the end you can say with a clear conscience that he didn't mouth too much. After a high-quality musical opening with Verdi's classic Aida , the debut will be Rossini's most famous buffo opera, Il barbiere di Siviglia, brought to a glorious conclusion. On the third day, the Dortmund Philharmonic still seem just as fresh as in the opening premiere and let Rossini's brisk crescendi flourish with a lot of playfulness. The directing team led by Martin G. Berger chose an approach that is very family-friendly, at least until the break, and sets the story in a kind of Augsburger Puppenkiste. The connecting recitatives are largely deleted and replaced by a narrator who tightens the story a little and thus leads from one musical climax to the next. For the part of the narrator, Kammersänger Hannes Brock was engaged, who is now actually retired, but remains loyal to his long-term place of work, according to the motto: "You never go that far!" In February 2019 there will also be a new evening with him entitled I am still hereon the program. With his very own charm, he enters the stage at the end of the overture, which is presented very snappily by the Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Motonori Kobayashi, and leads through the first act like a nice fairy tale uncle. In doing so, he concentrates on suitable characterizations of the individual figures, who then each introduce themselves with their great aria from the first act. The fact that the arias are installed in a slightly different order from the libretto does not disturb either the course of the action or the suspense of the story. The figures move across the stage as oversized marionettes on long strings lowered from the rigging loft and appear intentionally wooden

At the Dortmund Opera, director Martin G. Berger has succeeded in staging a production that is as turbulent as it is gripping. In front of the large stage portal, on the gallery that surrounds the orchestra pit directly in front of the first row of spectators, there is a small stage portal on a bar stool. And the stage designer Sarah-Katharina Karl built another portal into the actual stage portal of the Dortmund Opera House, framed in full width by wooden walls in covered walnut and with a velvet red curtain like the small one on the bar stool. Taken together: A portal in front of the portal in the portal. This staggering says a lot about Martin G. Berger's production .The director, born in Berlin in 1987, one of the most imaginative in a whole series of highly talented newcomers of his generation, overlays Rossini's "Il barbiere di Siviglia" with several levels of meaning. His work, enthusiastically acclaimed by viewers, is a multiple nesting that is as intelligent as it is puppet-like. The term "doll-loving" is to be taken literally here. With the active help of the puppet maker Rachel Pattison and the costume designer Alexander Djukov-Hotter, Berger turns Rossini's opera heroes into a team of foolhardy and, in the end, rather sad puppets. The costumes exaggerate the characteristics of the buffa types into the fantastic, the singers hang in their flying harness like marionettes on their strings. And like marionettes, they can even fly – Count Almaviva, for example, hovers onto the stage in his silver outfit like a glamorous deus ex machina. And it is precisely this puppet-like and machine-like quality that suits Rossini's music and dramaturgy very well. Their characters are actually from the types of the Commedia dell'arteemerged and the musical vitality purrs like a well-oiled machine, speeding up number after number, a perfectly coordinated mechanism that rushes inexorably towards the finale. From this artificial alienation of all movement sequences alone, Berger gains an exuberant comedy, for example when a singer belts out cantilenas high in the air or the actors swing across the stage as if on a bungee cord.