Blogflojten

No staging, no sets — and I didn’t miss it

Macbeth, Royal Danish Opera 2026 We begin in the middle of a storm. You can already hear it rumbling away in the double basses of the prelude. We’re out in the forest, mud on the boots and battle still buzzing in the blood, as Mac…

Three pieces. Three doomed relationships. One apartment that just keeps getting worse…

Frauenliebe und -sterben, Staatsoper Hamburg 2026 Frauenliebe und -sterben – Woman’s Love and Death. It sounds solemn, tragic, and suitably Schumannesque – and it is. But somewhere between romance, ruin, and a remarkable amount of Reuter-related w…

Five Parsifals later, one thing is certain: there is no such thing as an easy walk through Wagner’s holy woods🌲⚔️✨

Parsifal, Bayerische Staatsoper That’s it – Easter is over, and so is my five-Parsifal passion parade: five Grail quests, five solemn sagas, and enough sacred suffering to last me until Pentecost. New sets, new styles, new singer…

A grail of a tenor, a trail of a bass — leitmotif or lost motif?🎶

Parsifal, Hungarian State Opera 2026 A red ho**ah, a guitar, water sloshing in jerry cans, Elvis hair – and Gurnemanz and his gang in puffer jackets, pairing polished shirts and ties with metal breastplates. Not exactly your standard …

Welcome to Monsalvat – home of the Holy Grail, now open daily! Guided tours, dramatic backstories, and emotional breakdowns included. Gift shop open from 10 to 5!

Parsifal, Semperoper 2026 Richard Wagner wrote Parsifal for his very own theatre in Bayreuth. Ideally, that’s where it would have lived happily ever after. It didn’t. Clearly. Because Parsifal isn’t just an ‘opera& #82…

Can you translate an opera?

Not tonight.

At Royal Danish Opera’s Der Rosenkavalier, the language stays German — and the dialect is already built into the text. Tiny tweaks, cut-off endings… you can practically hear it before anyone even opens their mouth.

Which also means something slips through the cracks when the surtitles don’t play along. Or when Baron Ochs goes full Hochdeutsch – neat, complete, and a bit too clean. Maybe forcing a dialect would have felt… slightly too seen?

Either way, the role sits vocally great with the German bass Patrick Zielke. And with acting that dances right on the edge of “is this too much?,” he carries an interesting Baron.

Act III drops us into a basement – shelves, shadows, things starting to wobble. Not quite the grand apartment we’ve been hanging out in for the first two acts.

Musically
Marie Jacquot starts on the broader side – a bit heavier, a bit slower than you sometimes hear it. Not a problem, just a different feel.

As the evening goes on, things open up. The sound gets lighter, more alive, almost chamber-like. You start noticing the small details – little figures flickering in and out.

The balance feels slightly off in the first two acts – the orchestra leaning in a bit too much – but in the final act, it settles. More space, more flow.

I’ve written more about it. If you want more juice, go to Lidl – or the link in my bio😉
📸Miklos Szabo

The dialect is already in the libretto – you can hear it before it’s even sung…😮

Der Rosenkavalier, The Royal Danish Opera 2026 Can you translate an opera into another language? A hundred years ago, when Der Rosenkavalier was fifteen years old, the answer was pretty much: of course you can. Translate, tweak, turn. Almost ev…