Barrie Kosky
The enduring popularity of The Threepenny Opera is often attributed to Kurt Weill’s music rather than Bertolt Brecht’s text. As director Barrie Kosky notes with characteristic hyperbole in the Adelaide Festival program for his new production with the Berliner Ensemble: ‘Weill … is as important for the history of music theatre as Wagner.’
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Wagnerians are like elephants: they never forget. Though the Royal Opera House may have become less conscientious about printing performance histories in its handsome red-covered programs, for many the memories of past Ring cycles at Covent Garden live on. That may not always be a healthy thing – there are of course few more necrophiliac artforms than opera – but it’s impossible to view the opening of Barrie Kosky’s new Ring in isolation.
... (read more)In Sydney last month, Barry Kosky’s production of Verdi’s Nabucco was booed by a section of its first-night audience, a unique occurrence, this, at the Australian Opera, but one that Kosky took in good part as an extension of the ‘playful’ side of the evening’s events.
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