Wagner's Lohengrin
Calixto Bieito (stage director), Matthias Pintscher (conductor) – With René Pape (Heinrich der Vogler), Roberto Alagna (Lohengrin), Vida Miknevičiūtė (Elsa von Brabant)...
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Cast
Calixto Bieito — Stage director
Rebecca Ringst — Set designer
Ingo Krügler — Costumes
Michael Bauer — Lighting
Sarah Derendinger — Video
Bettina Auer — Dramaturgy
Jana Beckmann — Dramaturgy
Roberto Alagna — Lohengrin
Vida Miknevičiūtė — Elsa von Brabant
René Pape — Heinrich der Vogler
Martin Gantner — Friedrich von Telramund
Ekaterina Gubanova — Ortrud
Adam Kutny — Heerrufer des Königs
Staatsopernchor Berlin
Martin Wright — Chorus Master
Program notes
The illustrious Berlin State Opera, led here by Matthias Pintscher, offers up a fairytale voyage beyond the limits of your imagination… Indeed, supernatural elements abound in Wagner's Lohengrin, set in the Flemish region of Antwerp in the 10th century, a faraway land where the boundaries between dreams and reality are blurred. That's what spurred celebrated stage director Calixto Bieito to create two different frames onstage: the magic-filled forest on one side, opposite the courtroom where human-scale drama plays out.
As Bieito explains, fairy tales are not only a learning tool for children—they continue to brim with rich symbolic potential even to our adult eyes, revealing the stakes and limits of artistic narration. The superb performances by Roberto Alagna (Lohengrin), René Pape (Heinrich), and Vida Miknevičiūtė (Elsa) leave us with the same wide-eyed sense of wonder we felt as children: the power of opera, which transforms the stage of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden into a kingdom of our own imagining!
