Blonde 2

Willy Decker's celebrated production of Die tote Stadt has finally arrived in London. Having done the rounds in Amsterdam, San Francisco and Barcelona, this landmark interpretation marks the first UK staging of Korngold's third and most famous opera - an odd fact, perhaps, considering the composer's near-canonisation in parts of the European opera circuit in recent decades. Decker’s production originated in Korngold's own Austria, where it was a highlight of the 2004 Salzburg Festival, before being presented in Vienna. Though the dead city of its title is literally Bruges (in accordance with the novel by Georges Rodenbach on which it is based), it is very much the spirit of the Austrian capital that haunts this piece. First performed in 1920, the year after Freud’s essay upon The Uncanny, Die tote Stadt is suffused with both the heavy…