Buried Treasure

Les pêcheurs de perles was the first of Bizet’s operas to be performed and it has come to be regarded as a work of great promise, if not quite a great work; the passage of 150 years has increased the fame of its most celebrated numbers, but has not quite been able to redeem the dramatic flaws of a story that even the librettists admitted was not written to the height of their abilities. Yet the compelling new production at the Staatsoper – directed by legendary filmmaker and first-time opera director Wim Wenders and conducted by Daniel Barenboim – offered some cause for reevaluation; between its succession of visually exquisite scenes and its unexpectedly imposing approach to Bizet’s score, it suggested that, beneath the opera’s basic exploration of love and friendship was the more primal tale of an earthly paradise brought down by human…