Conventional wisdom holds that La Sonnambula is a work of light entertainment, a slight plot, improbable characters, a few big numbers and a last minute reveal that allows everything to work out in the end; with a good soprano in the title role, it can at least be charming. Yet no one appears to have informed directors Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito, whose production – which opened recently at the Deutsche Oper after an initial appearance at the Oper Stuttgart in 2012 – offered an unexpectedly dark plunge into the unanswered questions at the fringes of Felice Romani’s libretto. The subtly twisted staging, bolstered by a handful of wonderful performances, allowed this Sonnambula to emerge as entertainment of an altogether higher order.
For the first hour, it appeared that the directors would content themselves with a straightforward,…
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