A Crisis of the Self

Over the past several seasons, the Deutsche Oper Berlin has been engaged in some impressively diverse journeys outside the standard repertoire. In addition to their Meyerbeer cycle and a series of world premières, they have also started to reappraise works from the early decades of the twentieth century that have since fallen into semi-obscurity. This season Berlin audiences were offered the chance to see a new production of Alexander von Zemlinsky’s relative rarity Der Zwerg, a musically fascinating (if thematically troubling) work by a perpetually underrated composer. While the stylish, focussed staging from Tobias Kratzer sought to find the autobiographical potential within the bleak fairy tale, a trio of excellent principals and a finely judged performance from the orchestra made a strong case for Zemlinsky’s highly individual…