Black Sleep Boy

For opera enthusiasts the prospect of a new or recently-composed work always comes with a certain amount of excitement, if only for the reassurance that the artform we love is not stuck hopelessly in the past. Admittedly the classics of previous centuries account for the majority of new productions in a given season, but in the past several years the Berlin houses have provided audiences with numerous chances to experience new additions to the ever-evolving operatic corpus.

However Das kalte Herz – a new opera by Matthias Pintscher to a libretto by Daniel Arkadij Gerzenberg, which recently had its world première at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden – was a baffling prospect at best. Although it had a handful of intriguing images, and considerable passages of arresting musical invention, its story – a bewildering collision of German fairy…