Early in the first part of Aribert Reimann’s Medea – which opened in Vienna in 2010 and was recently given its Berlin première at the Komische Oper – there is a scene in which Jason and Medea are waiting outside the walls of Corinth hoping to find refuge at the palace of King Creon; the irritable Jason, who no longer has much affection for the mother of his children, eventually snaps at Medea, telling her she should get rid of the veil and dress more like a Greek woman. The line, adapted by Mr Reimann from the third part of Franz Grillparzer’s Golden Fleece trilogy of 1821, had an unmistakable resonance for a European audience of the twenty-first century; yet as the tragedy unfolded, the opera revealed itself to be less a parable of immigration and integration than a disquieting study of human cruelty.
Mr Reimann’s elegant score – given a…
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