Lohengrin

Hungarian film and theatre director Kornél Mundruczó, whose productions are shown at acclaimed festivals and theatres around the world, has also worked in opera for some years now. His production of The Makropulos Affair (2016) at the Vlaamse Opera was nominated for the International Opera Awards, and last year he staged the world premiere of Péter Eötvös' opera Sleepless at Berlin's Staatsoper Unter den Linden. He is also the founder and director of the independent theatre company, Proton Theater. With his team (including set designer Monika Pormale and costume designer Ania Axer), he now makes his debut at the Bayerische Staatsoper. Conductor François-Xavier Roth, renowned for both historically informed performance practice and for unusual programme combinations, and regularly invited by top orchestras, raises his baton for the first time in an opera production at the BSO. Klaus Florian Vogt sings the title role, and Marlis Petersen embodies Elsa for the first time.

A young boy has disappeared, the heir to the throne of an ancient empire. His sister is accused of his death. Instead of defending herself, she calls on a dream figure to stand by her. And her knight, who loyally comes, wins her cause and her heart. Only who he actually is, she is never to ask. Elsa and Lohengrin could now be a happy ruling couple. But the ban on questions opposes the urge to know, the romantic wonder is opposed by the desire to know, enlightenment is not compatible with blind faith. The doubts that her adversaries awaken in Elsa – Ortrud, who clings to the old gods, and Telramund, who has lost his honour – are naturally sown in every human. In Wagner's music, the seductive as well as the risky of Lohengrin's desire gains expression as he longs for love for its own sake. Kornél Mundruczó's new production explores the ambivalent potential inherent in the design of a man superior to the normal, endowed with supernatural powers. For him, Lohengrin is, "the most provocatively inhuman figure in the entire operatic cosmos." The action takes place in a posthuman world in which a group of survivors, full of fear and full of questions, hope for redemption.