Snowbound

The spectre of the twentieth century loomed large over Violetter Schnee, Beat Furrer’s newest opera, which recently had its long-awaited world première at the Staatsoper Berlin. The libretto, written by Händl Klaus from an original idea by Vladimir Sorokin, seemed closely bound to the overriding preoccupations of post-war theatre: the inability of language to express meaning, the disintegration of social order in the face of adversity, and the idea that human existence is a confined space from which there is no escape. Mr Furrer’s frequently magnificent score was equally steeped in the textural and harmonic language of the same era. Yet if the opera was indebted to the foundational themes and approaches of the previous century, it seemed less a throwback than a careful distillation. While Claus Guth’s attractively dark production was…