Wagner's Lohengrin

Don't miss "one of the most captivating productions seen at the Paris Opera in a long time" (Le Figaro), an "anti-war Wagnerian blockbuster" (France TV): the epic Lohengrin, staged by the iconoclastic director and filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov in his Paris Opera debut! The top-notch cast features Piotr Beczała in the title role, plus Wagner veterans Johanni van Oostrum as Elsa, Wolfgang Koch as Telramund, and Ekaterina Gubanova as Ortrud.

Serebrennikov's striking and elegant mise en scène updates the medieval myth of the knight Lohengrin and his beloved, Elsa von Brabant, to a modern setting of endless war. From Elsa's inner world of torment to a psychiatric hospital, a battlefield, and then a mass grave—these grim tableaux follow one another in a crescendo of despair all while the love between Lohengrin (in disguise) and Elsa grows. Sets by Serebrennikov and Olga Pavluk starkly cut the space into delineated regions, which feature atmospheric photographs and videos alongside the main action, evoking one of Wagner's most frequent leitmotifs: the eternal struggle between good and evil. In the pit, the Paris Opera Orchestra under Alexander Soddy "seamlessly transitions between finesse and fervor, while maintaining unwavering precision" (Olyrix), and the Paris Opera Chorus "excels and basks in glory from beginning to end."

Photo © Charles Duprat / Opéra national de Paris