Time Out of Mind

Whatever you were expecting, this probably wasn’t it. Dmitri Tcherniakov’s productions for the Staatsoper Berlin over the past decade have made a point of pushing operatic texts outside their comfort zones in ways that open up new avenues of meaning while retaining the emotional essence of the original; yet if his forays into the Russian repertoire – Rimsky-Korsakov’s Die Zarenbraut and the unforgettable ‘operaholics anonymous’ version of Prokofiev’s Die Verlobung im Kloster – were sustained feats of bewilderment and delight, it is Wagner that has pushed him to create his darkest, most revelatory stagings. His magnificent Parsifal cut straight to the uncomfortable misogyny that makes the work so problematic, and even his somewhat less-involving Tristan und Isolde approached the work from such an unexpected angle that it was impossible…