The new production of L’Italiana in Algeri at the Deutsche Oper Berlin was, on the surface, an utterly shameless crowd-pleaser … it was also, arguably, the most fun one could hope to have in an opera house. Rossini’s gloriously unsubtle volleys of bel-canto extravagance were matched note for note by Rolando Villazón’s exuberant staging, which improbably but seamlessly removed the action from its original setting and plunged it straight into the world of lucha libre. With a cast of skilled comedic performers and highly charged musical direction from Alessandro de Marchi the evening was a perfect storm of unconfined energy that only the most humourless traditionalist could have failed to enjoy.
Wrestling, in its modern form, is often considered a trashy entertainment, disparaged as much for the outlandish personae of its leading figures as for the scripted nature of its conflict (which places it at a distinct remove from more ‘respectable’ sporting events in which the outcome is dictated by skill and chance). Yet Roland Barthes recognised that the appeal of wrestling lay precisely in the notion of a pure spectacle in which the fundamental conflict of good and evil is amplified to proportions that verge on the ridiculous. If the complex choreography of the wrestlers has earned comparisons to ballet, the idea of simple conflicts magnified to room-filling size will certainly not be unfamiliar to anyone who has attended more than one or two operas.
All of which is to say that Rolando Villazón’s decision to set the opera in the world of Mexican wrestling is nowhere near as ridiculous as it may initially sound. Indeed lucha libre, with its spectacular costumes, distinctive masks and archetypal personalities fits comfortably into the grand tradition of theatre from which Greek tragedy and commedia dell’Arte also emerged … albeit with more fighting. And if there is, in fact, a secret kinship between opera and lucha libre, L’Italiana offered a surprisingly apt text with which to make the connection explicit.
Rossini: L’Italiana in Algeri. Alessandro de Marchi, conductor. Rolando Villazón, director. Deutsche Oper Berlin, March 2026. © 2026 by Eike Walkenhorst.
The plot of L’Italiana – which, in Rossini’s treatment is largely subservient to conspicuous displays of musical agility – is essentially a variation on Abduction from the Seraglio: what emerges is both a battle of the sexes and a clash of cultures, in which the wily western woman roundly outwits the arrogant foreign man. Mr Villazón’s transposition of the story from Ottoman North Africa to mid-twentieth century Mexico required remarkably little in the way of narrative tinkering: instead of coming from different countries, the characters simply came from rival gyms.
The Seraglio (located on Algiers street, of course) was run by El Bey, an ex-wrestler determined to gain a monopoly on the city’s wrestling scene, while the Italian gym, run by Isabella, was the indie underdog who had managed to hold out against their more powerful competitor. The revised story will be familiar to anyone who has seen the film Dodgeball, but it offered a near-perfect framework for the libretto’s succession of duets and ensembles, highlighting the key struggle between El Bey and Isabella, while also downplaying the opera’s inherent attitudes of cultural superiority (which have aged far less well than the music).
Had Mr Villazón merely updated the setting, the staging would have been little more than pleasantly diverting; but, in fact, coming up with a brilliant concept was only the beginning of his achievements. The staging that unfolded was a master-class in unhinged comedy and beautifully-observed character drama set in a world so perfectly conceived that it was impossible not to get drawn into it. The action took place against a background of three sets constructed on a revolving stage, each of which was a different part of the Seraglio complex: a bar/lunch counter, a shabby back-office, and the gym itself, complete with a real wrestling ring.
Rossini: L’Italiana in Algeri. Alessandro de Marchi, conductor. Rolando Villazón, director. Deutsche Oper Berlin, March 2026. © 2026 by Eike Walkenhorst.
From the slowly spinning ventilators on the back wall of the gym, to the malfunctioning ‘Tacos y Tortas’ neon sign above the lunch counter, to the accumulation of dust and grime on the lever arch folders in the office, not a single element of the sets had been left to chance. Such, indeed, was the attention to detail that the logo and branding for the Seraglio gym was all set in the font ‘Algerian’, a classic from the Stephenson Blake catalogue (huge respect to whomever on the production team came up with that one).
The meticulous approach to sets and costumes carried over to the treatment of stage action: it was an extremely busy staging, with all manner of comedic incidents going on in the background, but everything remained tightly controlled and highly focussed. In addition to the central narrative, Mr Villazón introduced numerous sub-plots acted out by silent figures, and some of them were so successful that, without losing the central thread of the story, one also found themself invested in the fate of the waitress at the lunch counter, or the novice wrestler who kept getting ejected by his burlier colleagues.
When it came to the central characters, however, Mr Villazón wasted little time on subtlety: Mustafà swanned his way through each scene with precarious bravado, Taddeo was an energetic combination of cowardly and canny, and Isabella’s man-eating swagger left us in no doubt as to how the story would play out.
By refusing to acknowledge how much might be too much, Mr Villazón ended up with a staging that was just right. In the first act, especially, he maintained an extraordinarily high level of comedic intensity without devolving into complete anarchy. And, having placed a ring centre stage, he did not deny us the pleasures of actual lucha libre: in the first act finale, the frenetic babble of the stretta was accompanied by a wonderfully choreographed match performed by two genuine wrestlers – El Comandante Rambo and Pascal Spalter – whose rattling of the floorboards turned an already feverish scene into a spectacle of the highest order.
If the second act didn’t quite match the inspired insanity of the first – how could it? – there were still many delightful moments, many of which involved Mustafà and Taddeo trying to out-buffo one another: the ‘Pappataci’ trio, in particular, achieved an infectious energy as much through the conviction of its clumsy dance moves as through the commitment of its singing.
Rossini: L’Italiana in Algeri. Alessandro de Marchi, conductor. Rolando Villazón, director. Deutsche Oper Berlin, March 2026. © 2026 by Eike Walkenhorst.
The inspiration of the staging was matched by a cast who seemed to be having a wonderful time bringing Rossini’s vocal set-pieces to life. While the operas contains a few conventional cavatinas – mostly given to Lindoro and Isabella – Rossini saved his most vibrant music for the ensembles, and the vocal success of the evening lay less with any one singer than on the ability of the various singers to play off one another. It was difficult to say whether Tommaso Barea or Misha Kiria approached the comedic demands of their role with greater gusto, but between the two of them there were few scenes that suffered from a lack of vitality.
Mr Barra’s lighter tone and agile phrasing were ideally suited to Mustafà: his first appearance exuded grand self-importance, but his subsequent duet with Lindoro demonstrated an equal facility with the rapid-fire delivery demanded of a buffo role. His ability to tackle Rossini’s fast-paced writing while remaining fully attuned to the overblown arrogance of the character brought a charge to each scene in which he was present.
Although Taddeo is, in his own way, as ridiculous as Mustafà – a fact made immediately apparent in the high-maintenance bluster of his first-act duet with Isabella – Mr Kiria’s weighty tone and impressive physical performance managed to locate a vaguely sympathetic foundation beneath the character’s relentless survival instinct. If his appearances in the first act revealed little more than a comedic stock figure, a series of delightful scenes in the second – the Kaimakan ceremony, the sneezing quintet, and the Pappataci trio – established him as a more nuanced figure.
While the staging didn’t bother burdening Lindoro with similar depths of character, Jonah Hoskins nonetheless had two elegant cavatinas, of which ‘Languir per una bella’ in the first act – sung with an amusing disregard for the chaos unfolding around him – was arguably the more engaging. Nadezhda Karyazina had the necessary charisma to render Isabella as the force of nature that Taddeo and Mustafà believe her to be, and her confident deflection of their attentions was among the evening’s most reliable source of comedy. Yet the vivacity of her ensemble scenes were balanced by the more subtle command of her solo scenes: if ‘Cruda sorte’ provided a flashy introduction to her character, ‘Pensa alla patria’ in the second act was arguably the finer showcase for her intricate phrasing.
While the staging may have tended towards contained chaos, Alessandro de Marchi’s musical direction offered a counter-force of firm control. The lean, restrained sound he established during the overture – in which Rossini’s explosions of orchestral colour were rendered with economic precision – were paired with a flexibility of pacing that worked equally in the service of the singers and the drama. There were moments of elegant solo playing throughout the evening – notably from the horn, the bassoon and the clarinet – and the percussionists approached Rossini’s sonic seasonings with some delight. Admittedly there were a handful of larger ensemble scenes – especially the first act finale – that couldn’t quite maintain absolute clarity in the face of so much activity, but they possessed such spirited momentum that it didn’t much matter.
It is often said that good comedy is more difficult to pull off than good tragedy. Whether or not this is true, there are certainly more ways in which comedy can go disastrously wrong; and the more chaotic a comedy is allowed to be, the more control is needed to keep everything on track. While Mr Villazón’s L’Italiana often suggested a whirlwind of madness, its comedy was constructed according to a rigorously conceived vision of its characters and scenarios. Nor was the addition of lucha libre merely a gimmick: in shifting the setting of the opera, Mr Villazón was able to offer a subtle recalibration of the story, quietly discarding the now-outdated clash of opposing cultures and focussing instead on the more enduring struggle that has secured the opera it’s place in the modern repertoire.
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