Enthusiastic audiences and raving reviews for the new production of Gioachino Rossini’s “Guillaume Tell” by RING AWARD 08 winners Tobias Kratzer and Rainer Sellmaier. Premiere was on 5 October 2019 at Operá de Lyon (in co-production with Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe). A haunting parable about culture and barbarism. Director Tobias Kratzer (in an interview with Operá de Lyon): “Once the seed of terror has started to grow, there is certainly no way back to the condition of innocence.”
Excerpts from the reviews:
“Kratzer deals with the fundamental threat to civilisation by the violence of barbarism, and with the price a defensive society has to pay for its willingness to resist. He has done so in his usual manner, analytical and profoundly musically grounded. With his – almost “old-masterly” – reduction of means, which is miles away from overbearing opulence, he triumphantly succeeds through the perfectly grasping directing of the singers. (Joachim Lange, nmz)
“The staging of the overture is concise and brilliant, evil destroys culture. […] Kratzer, not least since the triumph of his Bayreuth “Tannhäuser” this summer, is one of the most exciting opera directors of today. With utmost consistency he tells a story which, though always grounded on the themes of an opera, one at first would never have thought of but which on closer reflection often works exceedingly well. It doesn’t appear like whitewash but like something directly developed from the piece.” (Egbert Tholl, SZ)
“Tobias Kratzer reduced this masterpiece, which is often all too readily devalued as a merely agreeable vocal piece, to an incredibly clever chamber play set in austere black and white. He does so exhibiting musically all his analytical virtues and ends brilliantly with a well-justified question mark.” (Manuel Brug, Klassiker)
Photos (c) Stofleth
