Nigel Lowery's La Clemenza di Tito Fires Up Berlin

An unintended consequence of the musical and dramatic perfection that is the Mozart/DaPonte trilogy  is that most of the opera-going, Mozart-loving peeps affection is either poured on the trilogy and on the German-language operas (and OC may be in a minority but she considers Die Entfuehrung, musically if not dramatically, to be superior to the Zauberfloete). Poor La Clemenza, not less beautiful than these immortal works, sometimes gets shortchanged -- in OC's house, it gets almost the same airplay as the other works -- less than Don Giovanni, obviously, but more than Zauberfloete.

So every staging of Mozart's Clemenza (check out Caldara's Clemenza, too, it's seriously awesome -- but our readers know OC warships Antonio) makes OC happy. Berlin's Staatsoper Unter Den Linden is now presenting Nigel Lowery's staging of Clemenza, and we're biased because we always like Lowery's approach to stuff, he's that trademark Brit creature, a smartypants -- how OC likes smartypants! -- who hates stuffy dusty ideas but has the brains not to turn opera into a freak show. The Germans probably like him -- and hire him -- so much after being traumatised by their own "we'll-stage-a-123-hours-Ring-in-a-slaughterhouse's-walk-in-fridge-with-the-singers-wrapped-in-half-frozen-pig-carcasses" direktors, many of whom belong more in the dock at the Hague than in an opera house or a theatre anyway.

Anyway, here's more of Lowery's vision for La Clemenza, in the beautiful images taken by Monika Rittershaus for the Berlin Staatsoper (republished here by gentle concession).

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Update

Sesto, aka Elina Garanca, according to Bloomberg (the news service not the mayor) "the mezzo counterpart of star Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, a leggy dynamo with a solid recording contract who looks and sounds good in anything" liked that "OMG TEH HOUSE IS ON FIAH" photo that she used it for her own  webpage