Opera “Arabella” in Berlin: gender chaos with lace doilies – culture

The curtain goes up to the first, far too longing sounds from the orchestra pit, the experienced Donald Runnicles and the well-prepared orchestra of the Deutsche Oper spread a good operatic mood. In the opera “Arabella” by Richard Strauss everything sounds as it should, as it might have sounded at the time of the premiere in 1933 or at the even longer past time of the dying out of the great empire of Austria-Hungary. Director Tobias Kratzer and set designer Rainer Sellmaier also yearn for the past plush that evening, indulge in brownish Biedermeier furniture and bourgeois robes, airy lace doilies and heavy curtains. This depresses the mood and also creates phases of yawning boredom in the second act, when the orchestral music and narrative singing become entangled in mere conversational mode due to the lack of higher drama.