​Imprints of Man is a release that re‑imagines the dense, dissonant world of Imperial Triumphant’s death‑metal oeuvre through the intimate lens of solo piano. Conceived by bassist, pianist and filmmaker Steve Blanco, the record does not masquerade (pun intended) as a side‑project; it bears the Imperial Triumphant name, signalling that the band’s artistic intent remains intact even as the sonic medium shifts dramatically.

Historically, piano transcriptions have served several purposes. In the nineteenth century, Franz Liszt reduced orchestral scores to the keyboard, so that listeners, in an era before recorded sound, could experience symphonic music without needing a complete orchestra. Those reductions were not mere shortcuts; they preserved contrapuntal intricacy, timbral suggestion, and structural clarity, allowing the piano to act as a “transparent window” into the larger work. Imprints of Man follows this lineage, yet it also embraces a more modern rationale: the piano becomes a laboratory for reinterpretation. By stripping away the guttural growls, relentless blast beats, and distorted guitars, Blanco exposes the underlying harmonic clusters, rhythmic elasticity, and melodic fragments that animate Imperial Triumphant’s compositions. The result is a set of pieces that feel simultaneously familiar and freshly alien.

Imperial Triumphant has long positioned itself at the crossroads of avant‑garde jazz, urban soundscapes, and the extremities of metal. Their influences range from big city jazz and free‑form improvisations, of someone like Charlie Mingus, to the dark textures of Mayhem and Immortal. Imprints of Man extends this trajectory by invoking the Romantic virtuosity of Franz Liszt, the mystic chromaticism of Alexandre Scriabin, and the impressionistic color palette of Claude Debussy. The piano arrangements do not soften the material; they recast it. (With exception of the album closener, an adaptation of J.S. Bach’s F# Minor Fugue, here Bach remains unmistakably Bach, offering the most accessible moment on the record.)  Where a typical Imperial Triumphant track assaults the listener with layered distortion and rapid tempo shifts, the piano versions invite a slower, more contemplative listening mode. Complex chord clusters become audible sonic fingerprints, and the rhythmic drive is rendered through percussive keystrokes and dynamic pedaling.

In Imperial Triumphant’s music, the sheer visceral force is inseparable from a mental reshaping of perception. Stripped of that raw assault, the piano’s crystalline clarity allows listeners to trace thematic arcs, hear delicate voice‑leading, and mentally map the structure of each piece. The result is a listening experience that stimulates both intellect and feeling, in which these piano arrangements sound, more than their metal originals that can come across as deliberately ambiguous to resist definition, as if they pursue a definite purpose. Because the piano both illuminates the compositional skeleton and tempers the overwhelming intensity of the source material, the translation inevitably alters the balance between precision and raw power.  Although a piano certainly does not lack vigour (Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” is always a case in point here: the original piano version offers a sharpness and immediacy that the later orchestral arrangements often loses), some of the raw aggression inherent to the original tracks inevitably dissipates in the piano medium, which may leave some yearning for the visceral punch. But the pieces can stand on their own, and we always have the originals.
 
Imprints of Man bridges the gap between the ferocity of death metal and the introspection of a solo piano. It is always interesting to see how music can evolve across contexts - shifting from their natural habitat into another environment, from metal mayhem to the more reflective quiet of a personal space - and expanding its reach and references. On Imprints of Man, Blanco invites us to examine the architecture of sound, and appreciate the source material from multiple, equally valid perspectives. It results in an album that finds its place in a playlist just as fine next to “Sviatoslav Richter plays Scriabin” as next to Goldstar or Spirit of Ecstacy.

Algorithmic imagination
It is only fitting that a production of Parsifal, Wagner's “Bühnenweihfestspiel”, confronts us with new possibilities for staging an opera. Since its premiere in Bayreuth in 1882, Parsifal has always been more than just a musical work. It is an opera that raises questions about philosophy and religion, an opera that would raise important questions about how to stage an opera and thus be at the cradle of important theatrical developments in the 20th century. After the Second World War, each generation seems to have recreated the work for its own time: Wieland Wagner's minimalism stripped the work of its mythological trappings in the 1950s and presented it as a meditation on redemption; Hans-Jürgen Syberberg turned it into a cinematic drama full of psychoanalysis, symbolism and Vergangenheitsbewältigung in the 1980s; Calixto Bieito placed the Grail community in Covid times in a post-apocalyptic landscape populated by zombies (a kind of Walking Dead Parsifal) and now, at Opera Vlaanderen, Susanne Kennedy and Markus Selg carry Parsifal into the post-digital age by condemning him to an aesthetic of algorithmic imagination.

A musical triumph
If the staging led to division (we will come back to that later), this was certainly not the case with the music. Conducted by Alejo Pérez, the Symfonisch Orkest Opera Ballet Vlaanderen played with great clarity - a transparency of sound that Wagner himself would not have advocated when he composed the piece with the acoustics of the Festspielhaus in mind. Whereas in Bayreuth the orchestra sits below the stage, allowing the music to blend into a mystical soundscape, here the orchestral sound was open and exposed: refined strings, softly glowing brass and fresh-breathing woodwinds. Pérez's tempi were supple; he pulsed gently through the four-hour score in one long breath. One could hear how Wagner's harmonies never rest, but are constantly moving, always evolving – music as an atmospheric phenomenon.

The Choir and Children's Choir of Opera Ballet Vlaanderen have probably never sounded better. The final chorus was exceptionally heartfelt and radiant: redemption not through faith, but through pure, sublime beauty of sound.

A Parsifal in ten days
At the centre of it all was Christopher Sokolowski, who made his role debut as Parsifal following Benjamin Bruns' sudden departure – a role he learned in ten days, according to his own account (the press release mentioned three weeks). The result was nothing short of astonishing. His voice - clear, open, with a core of steel - conveyed both innocence and latent authority. His natural naivety was moving: not a seasoned messiah, but a boy who discovers his compassion step by step, amazed at the world he must save.

Sokolowski's Parsifal is in the tradition of lyric tenors who approach the role from Lohengrin rather than Tristan: lighter in tone, fresher in spirit. One couldn't help thinking of the young Peter Hofmann, or Jonas Kaufmann in his early years. This first Parsifal will be certainly not be his last and if his star keeps rising it seems only inevitable that Bayreuth, always in need of new saviours, will invite him sooner or later (let's get that out of the way).

Sokolowski was surrounded by a strong cast: Albert Dohmen, the Wagner veteran, gave Gurnemanz, father abbot and unreliable narrator in one, the authority that this leading role demands of its interpreter. His narration sounded as if it had been carved from oak. Kartal Karagedik gave Amfortas a poignant intensity, with a voice and delivery full of pain and longing. Dshamilja Kaiser was a fascinating Kundry, but she was plagued, more than the other singers, by the almost total absence of an effective stage direction. The direction offered her little more than the opportunity to sing her lines, which she did with a rich, physical timbre that encompassed all aspects of her character but that did not save her Kundry from really coming to life. Werner Van Mechelen's Klingsor cut through the digital scenery with sharp articulation - a human curse in an inhuman world.

Welcome to the Vortex
The setting for the story of the Grail community is a kind of vortex: a world in which digital and physical reality converge. We see a kind of nativity scene behind which an almost inexhaustible amount of AI-generated images are projected. In the centre is Parsifal, sitting in an illuminated capsule, a kind of igloo, from which he observes the events. In the first act, he remains completely passive – we see the result of the swan he kills in hallucinatory AI: a creature with two heads and three legs, floating in a digital wasteland (apparently there was no time or budget for iteration in the prompt design).

The staging works best in the third act when Parsifal, like in a 1970s science fiction film, shoots through space and, on his way to enlightenment, sees the Hindu god Shiva and some Greek gods pass by. The religious manifests itself in various forms, not unusual in a Parsifal staging. This journey leads to the final scene in which Parsifal, now enlightened, ascends with his igloo. The saviour redeems himself and the world (the Grail community). Behind him, a dove flutters in AI kitsch. (Wieland Wagner would turn in his grave. At the insistence of Bayreuther Parsifal maestro Hans Knappertsbusch, he once reinstated the dove he had deliberately omitted from the final scene. But he did so in his own way: he had the bird appear so high up in the stage roof that only the conductor could see it; the audience did not see the animal. Wieland did not like to emphasise the obvious.)

Total theatre and the collapse of time
Kennedy and Selg's pursuit of a form of total theatre – in which sound, image, body, text and technology become one – could, on paper, tie in with the sacred, sensory dimension of Parsifal. Yet, when seeing the result, one's thoughts turn rather to other, more successful examples of total theatre, such as Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Die Soldaten, in which time is 'flattened': a theatre in which everything happens simultaneously, in which cause and effect disappear.

Such a concept could also work for Wagner. In his work, characters and their actions are never confined to the ‘now’. Flashbacks, flash-forwards and the present coexist. In Parsifal, the traditional theatre of action and psychological motive disappears. What remains is a mystical, process in which music and time coincide. When the action in the third act slows down to a near standstill, Wagner achieves a form of timelessness that is closer to meditation than to drama. A staging that successfully elaborates on this 'flattened time' should therefore not add more images or information, but rather remove them and create space for stillness and contemplation.

The AI-generated images, intended to blur the line between simulation and reality, often look like visuals from a video game from twenty years ago. The images come and go but rarely have any meaning. Jay Scheib's Parsifal in Bayreuth suffered from the same problem: new technology that conceals rather than reveals. One succumbs to the temptation to use new means as an end in themselves, while the real curiosity about the visual, about what images can add to music that is already so evocative in itself, is lacking.

Due to the continuous stream of images, Wagner's last opera gets lost in a pixelated landscape in which the sacred fades into decorative spectacle. Eventually, one wonders why the creators did not simply use stock videos and photos: they would have contributed just as much – or just as little – but would at least have been of better quality. Paradoxically, Kennedy and Selg's post-digital total theatre narrows the view: the AI reduces Wagner's universe to an aesthetic of the exterior – a screen that obscures the view of the inner world. 

This Parsifal-in-abundance was the opposite of the previous production of Wagner's last opera that Opera Vlaanderen presented. In 2013 and 2018, Tatjana Gürbaca provided Parsifal with a extreme austere staging by bathing an empty stage in bright white light for the duration of the entire opera. That was not ideal either, but at least her Parsifal was supported by ideas that she had formed about the work. That underlying layer of ideas seems to be absent here. 

Adolphe Appia and the innovation of opera staging
Parsifal was once a source of inspiration for real theatrical innovation. Adolphe Appia, who attended the premiere in Bayreuth in 1882, was completely mesmerised by it: he saw Wagner's work not as a sacred ritual, but as a blueprint for modern theatre - light, movement and architecture in harmony with music. Appia's vision led to some great revolutions of the 20th century: Edward Gordon Craig's symbolic spaces, Bertold Brecht's alienation, Robert Wilson's sculptural lighting.

Against this backdrop, Kennedy and Selg's digital images feel strangely conservative. GenAI is used in a clumsy way here; it is not a new language, but simply a brush with a manufacturing defect. A more innovation-oriented production would involve, for example, AI interacting with artists, responding to the orchestra and modulating its textures in real time. (Perhaps the AI Ring in Bayreuth next year can achieve something here – we await this with some reservation). 

Between transcendence and technology
Musically, this Parsifal is a triumph: warm, balanced, spiritually charged. Visually, it drowns in excess. With this tension between music and image – between transcendence and technology – this production is a true reflection of our times, in which the search for meaning in a world of excessive stimuli can be a challenge in itself. The accusation of excess would not have sounded strange to Wagner. After all, he was accused of the same thing: his music was said to overwhelm the senses and thereby paralyse the mind instead of uplifting it. As far as the latter is concerned, we could see that the visuals did indeed paralyse the mind at times, but the music uplifted it again, as always with a musically excellent performance of Parsifal. 

Alban Berg's Wozzeck, the first atonal opera in history, is among the most poignant and radical works in the operatic repertoire. No comforting melodies, no heroic arias -- but shrill dissonances and musical fragmentation. Berg's atonal sound language pushes the listener away, creates distance, even discomfort -- and yet that is precisely what brings us closer to Wozzeck. The pushing and pulling of the music creates room for empathy. For Wozzeck, for Marie, and for the child they will leave behind.

Wozzeck was once, a quarter of a century ago, the very first opera I saw live. For an entry-level opera, perhaps not the most obvious choice, but that lack of an opera past was perhaps also an advantage. I went in with an open mind, not knowing what to expect and, like the audience at the premiere in 1925, entered Neuland. It was a theatre experience that alienated, amazed and moved -- but above all, one that was fascinating enough to make me want to experience it again. Good art works on several levels. It impresses on first encounter and, as you delve into it, only gets more interesting.

Alban Berg’s Wozzeck is not an opera you passively undergo. It is a sonic assault, based on an unfinished play by Georg Büchner. A story of power, madness, humiliation, and the loss of humanity, carried by music that often seems to resist beauty itself.

Johan Simons is no stranger to Wozzeck, having directed Büchner’s play three times before. Simons is a director with a distinctive and recognizable style, marked by social engagement, aesthetic austerity, and psychologically charged acting. In his work, he often seeks the moral and human core of a text, stripping classic repertoire of excess romanticism or decorative frills. For Opera Vlaanderen, he now tackles Alban Berg’s opera for the first time. In his earlier productions of Büchner's Woyzeck, he avoided reducing his protagonist to mere victim or perpetrator, people become perpetrators because they are victims he apparently wants to say, and here too he zooms in not on individual guilt, but on a world in which human dignity is fragile.

Simons situates the protagonist’s mental decline within a scenography that makes Wozzeck’s psychological space tangible. The stage is bathed in light — a white space with fragmented walls that don’t connect, like a labyrinth with no center, an institution with no escape. Light projections and subtle shifts suggest the walls are moving, as if Wozzeck lives in a world slowly slipping off its axis. In this clinical white environment — both open stage and closed sanatorium — the boundary between reality and delusion is extremely blurred. Everything becomes internal experience. A stage image as a mental state: a frozen psychosis in light and line. A story of spiritual darkness unfolds on a stage that, through its brightness, feels all the more oppressive.

From the very first scene — Wozzeck smearing himself with blood, as if Marie’s murder has already happened — it’s clear we’re witnessing a tragedy waiting to unfold. This is not a spontaneous descent into madness, but a predestined collapse, a logical consequence of a merciless world that leaves no space for someone like Wozzeck. “Der Mensch ist ein Abgrund” the title character says — and in Simons’ direction, the abyss, along with the characters and their flaws, is brought palpably close. The audience is granted a glimpse into that abyss — and, as every good abyss should, it stares back.

Simons presents the story with simple, direct images. As often in his work, anecdote is absent: he abstracts, distills. For the climax — Marie’s murder — he opts for a theatrically sublimated image. No blood, despite its abundance in the rest of the performance, and no physical depiction of violence. This somewhat mutes the dramatic peak, making the tragedy less a sum of what preceded it. That scene could have been a bit more confrontational.

Notably, the children — who in the libretto appear only at the end — are given a place on stage from the beginning. Here, they serve as silent commentary: a mute Greek chorus, the future observing the wreckage of the present. They react but do not act. This adds a reflective layer to the performance and places the adult world under a magnifying glass of childlike wonder and helplessness. Their presence makes Wozzeck’s world all the more harrowing, but also offers a hint of hope. Simons has stated that he hopes the audience leaves with a heavy heart. That he succeeds is a testament to the production — and yet, thanks to the children, a touch of solace sneaks in. A suggestion that, despite everything, a future is possible that doesn't resemble the present.

The title role finds a sublime interpreter in Robin Adams. Adams makes Wozzeck a real Mensch: broken and anxious but not without humor, a three-dimensional character. His performance is raw, impassioned, and deeply felt. Adams stood out even within a strong cast.

Marie, sung by Magdalena Anna Hofmann, is also a figure living on society’s margins. She has an illegitimate child, is supported by Wozzeck who gives her money from time to time, and seeks something resembling life in the arms of the Drum Major. Hofmann portrays her as a woman full of longing, pride, and despair. Unlike Wozzeck, she clings to life. Her voice — powerful enough for Isolde or Brünnhilde — crawls through Berg’s score like through a funnel: a monumental force that penetrates musical fabric with razor-sharp focus. She, too, is an abyss — but one that fights against her own depths.

Opposing this dramatic gravity are grotesque supporting roles that, despite their cruelty, offer some comic relief. James Kryshak’s Captain and Martin Winkler’s Doctor are caricatures in an absurd nightmare — cold, ludicrous figures of power whose indifference only deepens Wozzeck’s disorientation. Samuel Sakker, meanwhile, makes the Drum Major a convincingly egomaniacal seducer.
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The orchestra, under the baton of Alejo Pérez, delivers a tour de force. The sound is robust, uncompromising, but also rich in color and nuance. The brass section in particular are having the time of their lives. They push themselves gaudily forward in the orchestral sound. They are like shadows closing in around the characters, roaring, whispering and shuddering through a sound world that is like an expressionist painting in sound. And under Pérez's direction, everything in that painting, from screaming colours with the broad brush to the fractal structures of the pencil, takes on its weight.

Opera Vlaanderen deserves high praise for programming — after Luigi Nono’s Intolleranza — yet another 20th-century masterpiece that scrapes, stings, and confronts (perhaps only Die Soldaten by Bernd Alois Zimmermann could have ended the opera season more explosively). Wozzeck is not a comforting piece, but a revealing one — an opera that forces insight. A work that, in a strong staging like this, will haunt the mind for days. Next year, Opera Vlaanderen ends the season with Carmen — another opera about a jealous man who kills a woman, but one with which it’s perhaps easier to ease into summer. That final observation, it should be clear, is by no means a suggestion to avoid Wozzeck. The lover of passionate theater and intense musical drama knows what to do: head to Antwerp or Ghent, where this magnificent production runs until the end of the month.

She may not have a shadow, but she certainly has great music. Massive, lush, and luxurious (Gurre-Lieder, eat your heart out!). Die Frau ohne Schatten is not Strauss’s best opera—its storyline is too unbalanced for that—but it is arguably the opera into which he poured some of his finest music. At the Dutch National Opera, the first three rows of seats had to be removed to make space for the 130-piece orchestra. Their sacrifice was not in vain.

Katie Mitchell’s new production of Richard Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten is a bold, gripping, and unapologetically modern reinterpretation of a notoriously complex opera. Instead of the traditional fairy-tale setting, Mitchell opts, in her own words, for a “feminist sci-fi thriller.” She presents a version stripped of ornamentation, with clear narrative focus and heightened emotional intensity—without entirely sacrificing the dreamlike character that defines the work.

Mitchell is a theatre-maker with a distinctly activist edge. A self-declared feminist—more relevant than ever in an era of mounting threats to women’s rights—she lives and works according to her principles. For instance, she refuses to fly for ecological reasons and is known for her radical reworkings of classic texts. While she is praised for the urgency and vision that define her work, she has also faced criticism for “butchering” classical works rather than interpreting them.

At the heart of Die Frau ohne Schatten lies a multilayered, metaphysical narrative, inspired by Goethe's Faust, Mozart’s Zauberflöte, and mythical archetypes—an opera full of spirits, royalty, moral trials, and a symbolic search for humanity and for what makes a woman a woman (namely, her fertility). It is not a story that demands rational clarity; rather, it unfolds through a kind of dream-logic where symbolism and emotional intuition outweigh cause and effect. But Mitchell deliberately chooses rationality and structure. She constructs a tight, psychologically coherent framework around the story and introduces a “realism” that some may find too reductive or alienating-certainly those attached to the mystical, open structure of the original. But for me, it worked. Her clarity brought structure and emotional focus to a story that often remains nebulous and diffuse.

Her greatest achievement may be how she transforms the opera’s mystical vagueness into something psychologically tangible. By staging a "realistic", sometimes clinical world—complete with movements in slow-motion (a technique she also employed in her production of George Benjamin’s Lessons in Love and Violence)—she draws out the cinematic quality of Strauss’s orchestral interludes. It often felt like watching a series or movie.

One of Mitchell’s strongest choices was to stage the otherwise invisible Keikobad (the king of the spirit-world) as a silent character. With his gazelle head, long black coat, and slow, controlled movements, he became a disturbing presence—a silent, looming force that haunted the action. The use of animal masks frequently evoked David Lynch’s Inland Empire. A film, with its potent scenes embedded in an overall sense of disorientation, that had in common with this production that the things that remained diffuse and unclear (and there were still quite a few of them, despite Mitchell's dissection of the libretto) did not get in the way of an immersive viewing and listening experience.

Not all her choices convinced. Keikobad’s henchmen pointing guns at everyone at nearly every moment was a heavy-handed reminder that all action occurred under coercion. It became gratuitous. Likewise, the scenes where these henchmen shot characters who had outlived their narrative usefulness felt forced and overly literal. In those moments, Mitchell’s tight direction tipped into overstatement.

In her dark reinterpretation of the opera’s ending, Mitchell again deviates from Hofmannsthal’s libretto (good—the ending is arguably its weakest point). Where the original veers toward a forced, hollow reconciliation, Mitchell opts for a somber, oppressive close. The dream doesn’t end in triumph, but in exhaustion. It’s a daring but effective choice. The audience left the theatre under a moon of melancholy, with grateful minds.

Setting aside the staging and direction, Die Frau ohne Schatten is, above all, a triumph of music. Conductor Marc Albrecht and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra made a passionate and magnificent case for this being perhaps Strauss’s most ambitious score. In this music, the erotic tension of Salome, the visceral impact of Elektra (Keikobad’s leitmotif clearly references Agamemnon’s), and the illustrative brilliance of Der Rosenkavalier all meet. Amid the sumptuous orchestration lie intimate, chamber-like moments of stunning beauty. One of those was delivered by guest cellist Floris Mijnders, brought in especially from the Munich Philharmonic. With mournful lyricism, he cut through the orchestral density to remarkable effect.
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In that orchestral storm—which rarely erupts into full tutti but instead pulses with constant undercurrents—the singers had to hold their ground, and by and large, they did. The voices of Aušrinė Stundytė (Die Färberin) and Michaela Schuster (Die Amme) may have lost some lyrical sheen over the years, but both singers brought depth and conviction to their roles. Their characters came to life with an emotional intensity well-matched to Mitchell’s psychological approach.

In the cast, Josef Wagner stood out. His portrayal of Barak, the husband of Die Färberin, was warm, strong, and lyrical—a role he gave emotional depth and gravitas. AJ Glueckert was a solid Emperor, the husband of the woman searching for her shadow. Daniela Köhler, a seasoned Strauss and Wagner soprano, took on the Empress—the titular woman without a shadow—with dramatic command. Whatever she lacked in vocal expressiveness, she made up for in a portrayal that convincingly conveyed her character’s inner struggle. A subtle but striking element was the children’s choir, who sang the voices of the unborn children. Hidden from view, their voices echoed like whispers from another world—worthy of a horror film.
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For me, Katie Mitchell’s direction of Frau ohne Schatten achieved what good Regietheater should: it opened up a classic opera to a new audience—not by simplifying it, but by illuminating it from a contemporary, and perhaps unexpected, angle. With powerful imagery, psychological depth, and orchestral brilliance that outshone everything, this production was an ideal entry point into one of the most enigmatic masterpieces of the twentieth century. It made me curious about the DNO production from 2008—a colorful, fairy-tale version staged by Andreas Homoki.

​Mozart’s Idomeneo, re di Creta (1781) marks a significant moment in his development as an opera composer. Commissioned by the Munich court, it was an opportunity for the young Mozart to showcase his talent in the prestigious genre of opera seria — a genre already considered somewhat outdated at the time, but one he sought to revitalize with innovative musical ideas. Idomeneo combines the formal grandeur of Gluck and the Italian tradition with Mozart’s own emerging sensitivity to human psychology and orchestral refinement. The work is ambitious, it experiments (over half a century before Wagner!) with the through-composed operatic form, it’s dramatically versatile, and musically rich — though not without structural problems. Giambattista Varesco’s libretto is uneven, the action occasionally illogical, and even Mozart struggled to create a coherent whole. Still, Idomeneo remains one of his most fascinating operas: complex and forward-thinking, yet dramaturgically fragile.

​In collaboration with Japanese visual artist Chiharu Shiota, choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui transformed the stage for Idomeneo into a web of long red threads, physically connecting singers, dancers, and actors to one another and to the set. It’s a visually striking concept: these threads make visible the underlying relationships and ties of fate, reminiscent of an extended Norn scene — threads of destiny, threads of memory.
 
Cherkaoui’s choreographic background is unmistakable in every scene. In opera, there is often a great deal of time when characters are on stage but not singing or directly involved in the action. What do you do with that time? It's an interesting question. Many opera productions suffer from stiff stage direction, with characters who are present but visibly lost when they have nothing to sing.

​In Cherkaoui’s direction, dancers and singers form a moving chorus that provides commentary on the action through choreography. The result is a staging that breathes visually, one that feels pulsing and alive. But this constant movement has its downside. While the dance is meaningful at first, it gradually loses focus and dramatic strength. At times, the production becomes more of an "exercise in movement" — beautiful to watch, but with a cloying aftertaste, as if something essential is missing: intensity, tension, sharpness. This feeling is reinforced by the sense that the onstage drama is often sublimated rather than embodied — the ballet smooths over where it should cut deep.
 
Musically, the evening brought mixed results. Cecilia Molinari (Idamante) and Anna El-Khashem (Ilia) delivered strong and nuanced performances. Daniel Behle as Idomeneo was solid, though he audibly struggled with his “applause” aria — the virtuosity that should give the aria its brilliance was lacking. Perhaps it’s simply not one of Mozart’s strongest pieces. Even in Nicolai Gedda’s version on Colin Davis's live recording — one of my favorite Mozart opera recordings — I find little to enjoy in it. Jacquelyn Wagner as Elettra was disappointing; her portrayal remained flat, whereas Elettra’s fury should be one of the opera’s expressive highlights.

​The ending Cherkaoui devised for Idomeneo was one in the tradition of Lars von Trier — a forcibly dramatic conclusion in which, contrary to the libretto, Idamante and Ilia are killed by Idomeneo. It made no sense. The entire opera follows Idomeneo’s anxiety for his son’s safety. He tries everything to avoid sacrificing him to Neptune, even offering himself in his place. And when Neptune finally offers a way out — relinquishing his crown to Idamante in exchange for the boy’s life — Idomeneo instead murders both Idamante and his beloved Ilia. Again, it makes no sense. Deviations from what the libretto and music communicate must still maintain a relationship with them. An alternative interpretation can challenge or even contradict the original intent, but it must remain emotionally and dramatically grounded — you can’t simply erase the text.

This Idomeneo is visually enchanting and at times musically glowing, but ultimately lacks the dramatic edge and emotional core that can truly bring the opera to life. The red threads stretched across the stage make many things visible but don’t always manage to move. What remains is an elegant, aesthetic production that intrigues but doesn’t cut very deep — a work of art you admire, but don’t fully feel.

IDOMENEO, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart / Dutch National Opera, 20 February 2026

Conductor Laurence Cummings
Netherlands Chamber Orchestra
Director and Choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui
Set Design Chiharu Shiota
 
Idomeneo Daniel Behle
Idamante Cecilia Molinari
Ilia Anna El-Khashem
Elettra Jacquelyn Wagner
Arbace Linard Vrielink
 
Chorus of Dutch National Opera
Dancers of Eastman
 
A co-production with Grand Théâtre de Genève and Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg

The Catharsis of Horror
It could be argued that horror can serve as a convenient outlet for the dark corners of the mind, a means by which the unspeakable is temporarily articulated and the repressed given a fleeting respite. At its best, horror interweaves the primal vibrations of fear with an aesthetic pleasure that both unsettles and compels, allowing one to shudder without really being in danger, to look into the abyss while standing safely at the edge. Horror can offer catharsis—not just the dispelling of fear, but a kind of exorcism, a purification of the unspeakable. It offers, if you dare say so, a refuge from the lurid, a stage on which the grotesque imagination can play without contaminating the waking world.

Horror as a Mirror of Reality
In an era when horror is not merely an artistic subterfuge but an everyday reality in which the world news is a catalogue of disasters from which a new page is turned every day—one could argue that the genre is becoming something more than mere distraction. It takes the form of a mirror that reflects the horrors of the times with a perverse and unflinching clarity. In this way, it offers a paradoxical respite: horror naturally creates order out of chaos and establishes a framework within which to engage with the incomprehensible. The worst is already imagined, shaped, contained in the story, and so one can entertain the fiction of control. It is, in short, a buffer—an emotional airbag, if you like—that softens the unrelenting impact of the atrocities of reality.

The Aesthetic Dimension of Horror
​The best examples of the genre achieve a peculiar alchemy, where the repulsive passes into the mesmerising, the monstrous into the sublime. This is the territory of the romantic: an intuitive recognition that reality, in its unadorned state, can be too grim to bear, that the world, stripped of mystery and metaphor, becomes intolerable. Horror, in this sense, offers not just an escape but a strengthening of the soul: the illusion of meaning grafted onto the meaningless.

​The Grand Theatre of Horror: Opera as Its Natural Home
It is hardly surprising that horror should find a willing accomplice in opera. Both are genres of excess, realms where emotion, unbridled and unapologetic, reigns supreme. Opera, in its very nature, is a theatre of extremity where love and hate, ecstasy and despair, life and death, are all interwoven in a spectacle of poetic inevitability. For passionate self-ignition and that insatiable urge to find eternity in an ultimate and orgasmic moment, opera offers a perfect stage. Finding beauty in the hideous perhaps nowhere finds a more succinct setting than in Salome—Richard Strauss’s fevered, lurid opera in which this synthesis is perceived at its most intoxicating.

A First Encounter with Salome
There are those operas that, immediately on first encounter, leave a crushing impression. It was on a warm day in June, almost a decade ago, and I was on my way with a colleague to a park in Amsterdam to watch an opera on a big screen.

- “I have two CDs at home,” the colleague had said, “and one of them is a birthday present.”
- “It doesn't last longer than an average movie, and you can always leave in between,” was my reassuring reply.

The opera in question was Salome (Dutch National Opera, Ivo van Hove). The beautiful weather and Malin Byström did the rest. And the music by Richard Strauss, of course. Enthralled, my colleague, with his self-proclaimed insensitivity to music, sat through an opera that, after all, is not immediately considered an entry-level example of the genre.

Salome is a work that relishes contradiction, fusing the primal with the refined, the obscene with the sublime. In many ways, it is a music-theatrical rendering of Gustave Moreau's painting of Salome. Every director faces a particular challenge: how do you complement a score that is already brimming with the vividly cinematic?

A Soviet Salome
In his production for Opera Vlaanderen, director Ersan Mondtag places the work in a socio-realistic Soviet aesthetic. In his version, Herod’s palace is transformed into a Soviet-Russian fortress—a place where the coldness and power hunger of a totalitarian regime converge. A site of doom, where the baroque yet raw décor evokes the graphic novels of Enki Bilal: a world of faded colors, expressive makeup, and a dystopian atmosphere that perfectly complements the dramatic intensity of Strauss’ score.

Mondtag is known for his radical reinterpretations of classical works, and in this Salome, he makes a striking change to the plot. While the original libretto ends with Salome’s brutal execution, Mondtag allows her to survive. Instead, a palace revolution unfolds, with a group of women rising against Herod’s tyranny. This results in a chilling final image: the dictator is overthrown, and Salome remains—not as a victim, but as a survivor.

Mondtag has not always made successful choices in previous productions for Opera Vlaanderen (He butchered Der Schmied von Gent and over-interpreted Der Silbersee), but this twist works surprisingly well. Herod as a dictator of Belarus, ultimately crushed by the very resistance he provoked. The contemporary political dimension Mondtag introduces does not hinder the story; his direction fully honors the dynamics of the music and text.

Balancing Modernity and Theatricality
Mondtag’s vision is, crucially, one of balance. He eschews the minimalism of so many modern productions, does not clad his cast in the drab uniformity of corporate realism. Instead, his staging embraces theatricality without lapsing into the cabaretesque excesses that marred, for instance, his production of Der Silbersee. This staging cultivates an atmosphere that is both evocative and eerily dreamlike. Yet, for all its visual grandeur, it is in the orchestration of human interaction that the production finds its true power. The movement, the gesture, the glance—each is rendered with a precision that elevates the performance, endowing the characters with a striking immediacy.

A Visceral Salome
In this feast for the eyes and ears, Allison Cook’s Salome explodes off the stage, with Michael Kupfer-Radecky’s Jochanaan as her obsession (beyond life). The eroticism and frenzy that Strauss’ music so powerfully conveys are translated here into a physically charged performance that never loses its intensity. Thomas Blondelle both sings and acts a fantastic Herod—someone who, after issuing Salome’s death sentence, ultimately meets his own downfall.

The Dance of the Seven Veils unfolds as a a tango of power and desire between Salome and Herod. Soon, the women of the palace household and the men of the palace guard are drawn into its fevered rhythm. But in time, the balance shifts—Salome and the women cast the men aside, an omen of the reckoning to come. At last, Salome claims her 'reward': the severed head of Jochanaan. In this moment of grim triumph, the women seize control, toppling the old order. Salome stands victorious, with the prophet's head held high - a symbol of pride, of a woman who has shattered the patriarch's rule and emerged as a heroine of her own making.

With this Salome, Mondtag demonstrates that a director can honor the essence of a work while infusing it with a bold and singular vision. The result is a mesmerizing production that is a feast for the senses--rich in spectacle and subversion. And in its palace revolution, one can only hope to discern a prophecy: the inevitable downfall of tyrants, not only onstage but in the world beyond.

SALOME, Richard Strauss / Opera Ballet Vlaanderen (review based on stream of OperaVision)
​Salome: Allison Cook
Herodes: Thomas Blondelle
Herodias: Angela Denoke
Jochanaan: Michael Kupfer-Radecky
Narraboth: Denzil Delaere
Orchestra Opera Ballet Vlaanderen Symphonic Orchestra
Conductor: Alejo Pérez
Direction, scenography and costumes: Ersan Mondtag

In the enchanting world of post-Wagnerian opera, it is remarkable to notice that Wagner's influence may have been even greater outside the realm of opera than within it. Perhaps even more than in opera, Richard Wagner left his mark on the world beyond. In film, for example—a medium that did not yet exist during Wagner’s lifetime. Film music would draw directly and extensively from his use of leitmotifs. His influence can be heard in the soundtracks of the 20th and 21st centuries. While 20th-century operas distinguish themselves from Wagner, stepping beyond the boundaries of tonality (Berg, Schoenberg) and embracing extreme dissonance (Ligeti, Penderecki), creating more alienating and unpredictable listening experiences that stray from Wagner’s direct, expressive musical language, film music built upon Wagner's techniques in ways that many modern operas did not.

​Wagner’s influence on opera after him was, of course, still significant. Where his impact on German opera was undeniable, his influence on Italian opera was even nothing short of revolutionary. In response to Wagner, Italian opera underwent a profound transformation, resulting in fundamental stylistic adaptations.
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Verdi broke away from traditional number opera in Otello and Falstaff, while Puccini later used leitmotifs to create dramatic unity. Composers such as Pietro Mascagni (Cavalleria rusticana), Ruggero Leoncavallo (Pagliacci), and Umberto Giordano (Andrea Chénier) adopted Wagner’s orchestral richness and continuous musical flow, incorporating them into darker, psychologically charged dramas, influenced by Wagner’s intensity. This led to more through-composed forms, breaking away from rigid aria structures.

​The world of post-Wagnerian German opera is one of evolution rather than revolution. Composers such as Richard Strauss and Hans Pfitzner refined Wagnerian principles while developing their own styles. Richard Strauss expanded Wagnerian orchestration and chromaticism, with Elektra pushing harmonic tension toward modernism. Hans Pfitzner retained Wagner’s orchestral richness and leitmotifs but blended them with Renaissance polyphony in Palestrina.

In the world after Tristan und Isolde, we also encounter names like Franz Schreker and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who, after a period of being forgotten (canceled by the Nazis), have returned to considerable (Korngold) to moderate (Schreker) prominence. Another composer who was long forgotten is Rudi Stephan.

In 1915, Stephan enlisted in the German army. "As long as nothing happens to my head—there are still so many beautiful things in it," he said to his mother upon departure. Ten days after leaving Worms, he was shot in the head by a bullet from a Russian sniper on the Eastern Front. "I can't bear it anymore," were his last words before, in an attempt to escape the horrors of war, he raised his head too far above the trench. A promising composer was tragically taken too soon.
 
Stephan had already composed several orchestral works, as well as pieces for solo violin and ensembles. His opera Die ersten Menschen was his first major work and had just been completed when war broke out in 1914. It premiered posthumously in Frankfurt in 1920. Although a few performances followed, Stephan's name faded into oblivion. However, as a recent rediscovery shows, Die ersten Menschen is a fascinating addition to the early 20th-century opera repertoire. Its late-Romantic style aligns with the musical language of Max Reger and Franz Schreker but possesses enough individuality to suggest that Stephan would have developed in his own, unique direction.

The libretto of Die ersten Menschen was written by Otto Borngräber, based on his own play of the same name. That play, an erotic mystery drama, was banned throughout the Kingdom of Bavaria after its first performance in Munich in 1912. Borngräber based the story on the biblical Genesis and the origins of humanity. Transforming biblical drama into opera was nothing new—Richard Strauss had proven its success with Salome (based on a play by Oscar Wilde, which itself was inspired by a short biblical passage). And a potential scandal only helped. (Strauss famously remarked that the “scandal of Salome” earned him a villa in Garmisch.)

The opera begins when Adam and Eve have two adult sons, Cain and Abel. The characters are: Adahm (bass-baritone), Chawa (soprano), Kajin (baritone) and Chabel (lyric tenor). Adahm has grown with creation and is no longer the attractive young man Chawa once fell for. "But then the time came. I just grew on and out of me grew man," he sings. He plunges fully into farming and animal husbandry, while Chawa remains stuck in a phase dominated by primary, hormonal drifts. In the opera, she acts like a sensual, horny woman who feels trapped in her circumstances.

Chabel experiences a revelation in which he discovers a higher power, bigger and older than Adahm, and names this being God. Thus, religion is born: the evolution from Homo Sapiens to Homo Religiosus. He demands a sacrifice and the construction of a temple (the sacrifice takes place by slitting the throat of a toy rabbit, embellished with stage blood). Chawa briefly finds meaning in this, but soon realizes that her situation remains unchanged. Adahm embraces Chabel’s religious vision but remains distant from Chawa. Kajin, on the other hand, fiercely resists. He does not desire a god but a wild, untamed woman.

When Chawa mistakes her son Chabel for the young Adahm in the dark, and Chabel is drawn to her, the situation escalates. Kajin, who has long desired his mother, sees in her the wild woman he craves. When Chabel is once again favored, Kajin loses control: he kills his brother and has sex with his mother. Chawa’s desires are unintentionally fulfilled, but the death of her favorite son overshadows everything.
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This tragedy brings Chawa and Adahm back together; they essentially begin humanity anew. Kajin is banished to the forest, where he continues his search for a woman.

Director Calixto Bieito focuses entirely on the sexual tensions and neuroses of Chawa and her sons. Bieito more often seeks extremes in his productions and often this flattens the richness and versatility of the source material. This is also the case here. Perhaps surprisingly, I found his Parsifal in Germany some years ago - in which he set the grail knights in a post-apocalyptic world, like a kind of Parsifal episode of The Walking Dead, one of the few productions in which his approach really worked (perhaps because he really went all-out there).
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The action largely takes place around a table, the stage for conflict and desires. Initially, the table is laden with fruits and flowers, but as the drama progresses, the scene becomes increasingly chaotic. (“Don’t play with your food,” is what your parents always said—but the first humans don’t care.)

Annette Dasch shines as Chawa, a woman driven by lust and frustration. Her acting, as always expressive, and singing make her a perfect fit for the role. She moves seductively across the table, while Adahm, played by bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen, remains stoic, focusing on his work—on his laptop. Ketelsen convincingly portrays the distant father, while his sons, initially dressed neatly in tuxedos, slowly lose control.
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Leigh Melrose as Kajin masterfully brings the role of the rejected child to life. In the Bible, his sacrifice is refused, while Chabel's is accepted. In the opera, it is the parents' stated preference for the gentle Chabel that drives him to anger. Along with dreamy and unworldly acting, John Osborn's impressive, lyrical singing makes him a perfectly cast Chabel. As far as I am concerned, the standout in a very strongly cast performance. That performance takes place on the front stage, with the orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Kwamé Ryan, placed behind a translucent cloth on the back stage. 

Die ersten Menschen is a fascinating opera that digs deep into human instincts and the primal history of humanity. The drama of the opera deliciously chafes against the drama of the daily news - a drama that is cold, unpleasant and disturbing - and slowly massages it away with a music whose tingling chromaticism, while certainly not shunning the grand gesture, has a pleasing sense of understatement. Music, art must be about something, always, and all the way now, it must have substance, it must be the real thing. And Stephan's opera has that. An opera that besides offering titillating, full-blooded drama has the added drama of a composer who saw the promise of everything he had left in him broken in the bud.

Die ersten Menschen, Rudi Stephan / Dutch National Opera, Amsterdam, 24 January 2025 

Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra 
Conductor: Kwamé Ryan

Director: Calixto Bieito

​Adahm:Kyle Ketelsen
Chawa: Annette Dasch
Kajin:Leigh Melrose
Chabel:​John Osborn

Dracula, Nosferatu, Orlok. Everyone's favorite bloodsucker has been reincarnated once again. This time, in a film by Robert Eggers, who is fulfilling a lifelong dream by giving Murnau's century-old film a 21st-century update. Updates don’t necessarily mean improvements (as this computerage has made abundantly clear) but in this case, they don't have to. The unrelenting fascination with canonical (horror) cinema makes a new Nosferatu an event, and the curiosity paired with the excitement that accompanies it cannot be sufficiently valued, especially in these dreary times.

Nosferatu, phantom of the night, a symphony of horror, scourge of humanity, was brought to film over 100 years ago by director F.W. Murnau, screenwriter Henrik Galeen, and designer Albin Grau. The story can be considered familiar. The first cinematic adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula was a case of copyright theft. The creators attempted to obscure this by changing the names of the main characters: Dracula became Orlok, Jonathan Harker became Thomas Hutter, his wife Mina was renamed Ellen and the boss of Jonathan Harker, Peter Hawkins, merged with the psychiatric patient Renfield into the role of Knock. Stoker's widow wasn’t fooled and successfully had the film ordered out of circulation. She even managed to have the court mandate that all existing copies be destroyed. That effort, thankfully, failed—darkness be praised—and the rest is film history. Nosferatu may well be the most iconic horror film ever made, one that continues to capture the imagination to this day.

A film, or any work of art, generates its greatest power through the story the audiences can add to it themselves—when the film takes on a life of its own in the viewer’s mind. Murnau's film feeds this storytelling in ways few others do. The lack of sound and the gritty, high-contrast black-and-white visuals amplify the imagination, making the movie feel like found footage. With its documentary-like quality and the appearance of the actor with the perfect name, Max Schreck, Nosferatu almost looks like a real vampire caught on camera (a concept explored in Shadow of a Vampire, where Willem Dafoe portrays Schreck as an actual vampire). Nosferatu is definitive in its rawness—a silent film for which hundreds of soundtracks have since been composed, from classical symphonic ones to modern rock. Watching the film accompanied by live music remains a unique experience.

Werner Herzog was the first to venture into a remake. It was more of a free adaptation than a remake as he himself said. A tribute to the greatest film that had ever come out of Germany. With his remake, Herzog wanted to build a bridge to the grandfather of German cinema, Murnau. A bridge that necessarily skipped a generation because the generation of Herzog's potential film father(s) was tainted with a Nazi past.
 
In Herzog’s film, unencumbered by copyright issues, Orlok is once again Dracula, and Thomas Hutter is Jonathan Harker (his wife, however, is Lucy, Mina’s friend in Stoker’s novel who is notably absent from Murnau’s film, leaving her name vacant - or something like that). In Klaus Kinski and Isabelle Adjani, Herzog finds a couple that is incredibly photogenic and, as a modern incarnation of Orlok and Ellen, refers to the era of silent film.

Herzog’s Nosferatu is a poetic meditation on isolation and decay. It doesn’t try to be a horror film. Kinski’s Dracula is a socially awkward figure, someone who has lost all social skills through centuries of isolation. Kinski’s vampire is menacing without ever trying to be scary. His haunting presence, combined with Herzog’s understated style, creates a profoundly unsettling experience. The film’s pale, chilling ending heightens this unease. Jonathan Harker’s wife sacrifices herself, as in Murnau’s version, to free the world from Nosferatu’s curse. But Herzog adds an epilogue: Jonathan himself, transformed into a vampire by Dracula’s bite, rides off into the horizon in daylight, suggesting that Nosferatu’s curse not only persists but has evolved into a more resilient form.

In the 21st century—an era where the light just won't break through—a creature of the night will find its natural habitat. Robert Eggers seems attuned to this. While his motivation leans more toward entertainment than catharsis, Eggers understands that the time is ripe for an “old-school gothic horror film that’s genuinely scary.” Eggers consciously places his version of Nosferatu within the tradition of vampire films sparked by the 1922 original. Drawing inspiration from sources as diverse as Hammer movies and the Mel Brooks spoof Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Eggers adds his own flair by adjusting and introducing key scenes. For instance, Knock’s death is altered: Hutter kills him with a stake through the heart, a moment where Knock seems to regain his sanity, realizing that his devotion to Orlok hasn’t secured him eternal life but left him as vulnerable as anyone else.
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Unlike Herzog, Eggers reverts to the names of the original. For the roles, he cast Lily-Rose Depp as Ellen Hutter. Nicholas Hoult is Thomas Hutter. (Hoult is no stranger to the Dracula repertoire; he was previously seen as Renfield in the film of the same name in which Nicolas Cage smirks his way through the role of Dracula.) Simon McBurney, theatre director with a creditable acting track record, is Knock and Willem Dafoe returns after Egger's previous film, The Lighthouse, as the doctor of occult affairs, Albin Eberhart Von Franz (the Van Helsing-role and yes, the name refers to Albin Grau). Bill Skarsgård is transformed beyond recognition into a monstrous Count Orlok.

The film is unmistakably a product of our time—a time in which buildup and proper tempo are often sacrificed for action and rapid editing. Despite the fact that Eggers demonstrated a strong sense of pacing in his previous films The Witch and The Lighthouse, Nosferatu too falls prey to the trend of keeping tension arcs short. Yet the film still feels overly long, mainly because it contains too many scenes and burdens its characters with too much (mediocre) dialogue. It seems as though the film fears its audience won’t understand it without everything being explained, leaving little to no room for ambiguity.
 
For the soundtrack, Eggers wanted to rely on the sound of instruments from the period in which the film is set—a (fictional) 19th-century Germany. No electronics, then. Composer Robin Carolan, who also collaborated with Eggers on The Northman, stays in the spirit of James Bernard, the soundtrack composer of many Hammer films. While the soundtrack didn’t particularly stand out while watching the film—it’s no Popol Vuh for Herzog’s Nosferatu—my appreciation for it grew after listening to it separately. It’s a beautiful symphonic score with enough dissonance to avoid excessive sweetness, although it could have used a bit more edginess in the final scene.

The visuals also reference romantic artworks. It looks stunning, and lovers of classic gothic horror will delight in it, but the film feels like a collection of trailers lacking a cohesive overarching tension arc. While it has plenty of atmosphere, it lacks buildup. Each scene feels like an elevator pitch that needs to make its point, evoke instant scares, and provide instant gratification. In Herzog’s version, for instance, the ship bringing Orlok/Dracula to Wisburg is shown in a mundane way, with the impending doom settling into the viewer’s mind through the preceding buildup. By contrast, Eggers shows us a wrecked ship with rats stranded on the harbor, immediately leading to the conclusion that the plague has arrived in Wisburg. It’s instant information without buildup. Herzog’s film draws us into a story with real people confronting supernatural evil. Eggers’ film, on the other hand, is a pressure cooker of instant hysteria where the connection between the human factor and the supernatural is insufficiently developed. In that pressure cooker, not only does the story fall apart, but so does the world in which it takes place. Herzog presents us with a world that feels scalable. We see Harker traveling through a landscape, arriving at an inn and castle, and when we follow him inside, we remain in the same world. Eggers’ world, however, breaks apart into isolated, enclosed spaces that have an artificial gloss on them. It can be considered the curse of many modern productions: even when computer-generated imagery is avoided—Eggers opted for practical effects like a real castle, real animals (wolves and rats!), and potato flakes as snow (a technique borrowed from a 1940s film)—post-production still makes the end result look like CGI. There, the tragedy of the filmmaker reverting to analogue sources and getting trapped in contemporary pixels manifests itself. In terms of visuals and direction, Nosferatu seems more inspired by Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula from 1992 than its predecessors from 1922 and 1979 (though it is by no means as bad as Coppola’s film, which looks beautiful but gives us actors who walk around like they’re failing an audition).

As Ellen Hutter, Lily-Rose Depp carries the weight of all the misfortune; she awakens Orlok from his centuries-long slumber. Eggers had her watch a series of films for inspiration for her role, including Ken Russell’s The Devils. And it shows. Depp portrays a woman gripped by melancholy—not the kind of pain that secretly feels good, but the 19th-century version: a state of deep depression. When her depressive episodes escalate into Exorcist-like hysteria, the supposed intensity becomes somewhat tiring. There’s room for beautiful and poignant reflections on Ellen's relationship with Orlok—on the allure of evil, on unfulfilled desires and vague fears seeking a dark outlet. However, the film doesn’t connect us to Ellen Hutter’s deeper psychology; it fails to explore her character’s layers. The film falls flat here.

Now Orlok is a flat character by nature. His motivations seem purely nihilistic. He comes across as someone obsessed with bureaucracy and formal agreements. He meticulously follows the process of buying a house, ensures that both Thomas and Ellen "consent" to her marriage to him, and has it confirmed in writing. This obsession with bureaucracy makes sense—it serves nobles and landowners exceptionally well. Deeds and contracts outlive people, and mastery of bureaucracy enhances power.
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However, Orlok’s betrayal of the pact he made with Knock reveals something crucial: Orlok doesn’t actually respect oaths or agreements. No two-way street here. For him, they are just means to subjugate others. His motivations are purely selfish—he’s driven by the desire to consume, spread chaos and disease, and feed on Ellen. He doesn’t even want to make Ellen immortal or his eternal companion. As a vampire, Orlok shows no interest in creating legions of followers. The rats spreading the plague are merely byproducts of his presence, not tools for a greater goal like conquering the world. His focus is entirely on consumption, particularly of Ellen—even if it leads to his own destruction.

It’s only at the end that Eggers finds poetry within the horror, and it is there that the viewing experience gains depth. The ending is a stunning modern representation of the archetypal image of the Beauty and the Beast, Death and the Maiden. It’s grotesque and baroque—exactly what my gothic horror-loving heart desires. Without beauty, no horror and drama. Ellen sacrifices herself, and Orlok ultimately goes along with it. This makes their final, intimate moment a macabre duet—a necrophilic dance of death. It carries the chilling essence of Richard Strauss' (or Oscar Wilde's) Salome, a scene where horror is sustained by beauty, providing the film with a grotesquely beautiful and harrowing final chord.

Nosferatu is a film with flaws, that much is clear. With its adrenaline-fueled direction it’s like Solti conducting Der Ring, made to impress instantly but something that lacks flow--it doesn’t breathe. And for film, even the ones about undead bloodsuckers, the same rule applies as for music—it must breathe (like a Slayer song or a Bruckner symphony - you have this website for these kinds of comparisons, you're welcome).
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Nosferatu is a film that struggles to balance style and substance. It’s a film with stunning imagery and great moments (the scene where Orlok welcomes Hutter into his castle is wonderfully dark and intense) without becoming a great film. But know that this observation, along with all preceding comments, stems from a love for and engagement with the gothic horror genre. It’s wonderful that films like this are being made. And it’s wonderful that this gothic-romantic horror work of art frees us, if only for the duration of the film, from the everyday news, a world filled with real horrors and real monsters.

And so we come to a new year. Normally, I would immerse myself in a good Götterdämmerung to massage my mind. Music of an ending that harbours in it the promise of a new beginning. But this time, I find it difficult. The looming prospect of darkness in 2025 and beyond makes art with apocalyptic themes feel like something best put on hold. I simply can’t enjoy it right now. My current diet consists mostly of Haydn and (blackened) death metal—a kind of sonic aspirin to deal with the hangover of daily news and a sledgehammer to crush what lingers too long in my mind. Starting the day with Haydn has been a gift from a change in my social media behaviour. Like many others, I’ve migrated from Twitter to Bluesky (check out #A-Haydn-A-Day). That became inevitable when the owner of the former platform unabashedly presented himself as an advocate for global fascism. (Not that it was surprising, but there’s always a drop in the bucket, a moment of irreversibility. Ultimately, you do it for yourself, for your own mental well-being. Apparently, I’m not quite ready for Den Totalen Oligarchie yet.)

With fascism one comes, via music, quickly at Richard Wagner—the usual suspect among artists with a tainted reputation. I was made aware of Wagner’s association with unsavory history early in my journey of exploring his music. Years ago, during my ongoing quest for recordings of Wagner operas that demanded my attention, I met a very kind man in a record store. We talked about classical music, about Mozart and Solti. When Solti’s name came up, I mentioned something like, “He’s mostly known for Wagner, right?” (I was still in the homework phase, hadn’t yet bought a complete Ring cycle, and was debating the choice carefully—I wanted to avoid making the wrong decision. I still thought of Solti as a Ring that would render others unnecessary.) The man kindly but firmly stated that Wagner wasn’t welcome in his home. Part of his (Jewish) family had perished in World War II. Wagner was the composer of the Nazis; his music was the soundtrack of the Holocaust. I could only listen in silence, given the gravity of that association. He added that Richard Strauss was his limit; he was still willing to listen to Strauss. The man who became head of Germany's Reichskulturkammer in 1933 could count on his clemency. And he added, with a twinkle in his eye: “But I also really like Strauss.”

In every listener, the egoist probably ultimately wins out over the moral judge. The way art can speak to us in a highly personal way, the enrichment one owes on an individual level to that art, often transcends the artist's wrong views, or wrong behaviour. (Moreover, with people who want to ban books and music, it often seems that they do so with art they didn't like anyway). Of course, there are limits—especially when current events force us to stare the moral depravity of an artist straight in the eye (see box).

​My relationship with Wagner is so ‘personalized’ that I can view him in layers, separating his music from the Nazi contamination that clung to him posthumously. His anti-Semitism and racism may attest to a morally deficient character, his music speaks differently. If it didn’t, we could let him rest on the trash heap of history. But that music!

The quintet in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is one of the most beautiful, humane moments in all of Wagner’s operas. Each character in the quintet contributes unique depth, weaving individual emotions into a unified, resonant whole—a testament to Wagner’s mastery of polyphony and drama.

Yet Die Meistersinger is perhaps the Wagner opera most tarnished by the Nazis. Whether Beckmesser was intended as a Jewish caricature is still debated, but for the Nazis, he certainly was. That’s why I’ve never felt completely comfortable listening to the 1943 Bayreuth performance under Furtwängler (which, incidentally, omits the quintet). Although I can evaluate the music on its merits and find Furtwängler an intriguing conductor, it doesn’t rise above the stench of its context. The mockery of Beckmesser on stage, the laughter in the audience—it’s more than just a bit unsettling. Among all performances of Die Meistersinger, I’d rather skip this one.

In 1974, filmmaker Hans-Jürgen Syberberg interviewed Winifred Wagner. The interview remains a staggering document. As a fan of the music of her father-in-law (whom she never met), I’ve always felt a bit like a disaster tourist watching it. Winifred is clearly cultivated, well-versed in Goethe, but she was also a Nazi sympathizer. As an ‘excuse’ for that she claimed her affiliation with the Nazis was solely due to Adolf Hitler, whom she considered a good friend. Even 30 years after the war, she stated that if Hitler were to enter the room, she’d welcome him as a long-time close acquaintance.
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The combination of cultural sophistication and an apparent lack of a moral compass has always intrigued me. But in light of recent events, I’ve lost that curiosity. When the richest man in the world openly goes Full Metal Nazi, it becomes clear that a significant portion of humanity, even those presumed to possess functioning brains, is eager to return to it. To fascism, to the end of all that drivel about democracy and the rule of law (what has the rule of law ever done for me?). L'enfer c'est les autres.
 
The U.S. elections and their outcomes mean my interest in Winifred has completely evaporated. Where once her opinions on Bayreuth productions could coexist with her approval of the Nazis banning Jewish artists (she didn’t like Mahler anyway, so she didn’t mind that the Nazis canceled him), current geopolitical developments now cause me to become completely disinterested in how she thinks about staging an opera. In a world that seems to have fallen into a kind of ‘Fascism is inevitable’ psychosis, the luxury of a past safely behind us has disappeared and with it my tolerance for pernicious views. Because what was then is now again. In today's world, yesterday's world looms large (also in the opera house, as became clear at a performance of Iphigénie en Tauride).

As for Winifred and her friendship with Hitler, it’s now clear to me that her story wasn’t exceptional. There’s nothing particularly fascinating about it anymore. She was simply not a very good person. It happens. I don’t need to engage with it anymore. The Wagner family of the 1920s and 30s will manage without me while the music of that old bastard remains.

There is music that, upon first encounter, feels strange to you—and remains so for quite some time. It’s music you don’t immediately embrace, yet find fascinating enough to want to listen to again and again. I think of Alban Berg's Wozzeck, the first opera I saw live in a theater. I think of Messiaen, particularly his Catalogue d'oiseaux for piano, with its intricate evocations of the natural world, suggesting a musical landscape both elusive and enchanting, but also of someone like Milton Babbitt, whose (in)famous essay Who Cares if You Listen? seems to reflect a complete disregard for his audience, yet his music invites a continued curiosity.
 
And then there is music that feels familiar, even from the first listen. Music in which all the elements you encounter evoke warm feelings of recognition and appreciation, yet whose mixture is so much more than the sum of its parts that it completely surprises you. The sonic world of Blood Incantation is such music—a music where the landscape unfolding before your ears feels familiar, offering moments of déjà vu, yet in which the contemporary mix of death metal, symphonic rock, prog rock, and ambient soundscapes transforms the landscape you know into something infinite. A wondrous experience.

Blood Incantation has often enriched their death metal with symphonic and ambient tones, venturing far beyond the genre’s typical boundaries. They did sail into ambient waters on Hidden History of the Human Race (2019) where the death became spaciousness. And on their album Timewave Zero (2022), not even a single death grunt or guitar riff can be heard. It is an ambient work that even yours truly, self declared sceptic of everything too soundscapish, finds engaging. The long, expansive sonic fields on Timewave Zero draw the listener slowly into their depths, much like the sands of an endless desert that stretch toward the horizon, while never letting their focus wane.

Blood Incantation draws its inspiration from a wide and eclectic array of sources, ranging—naturally—from metal to ambient and pop, with nods to acts as disparate as Klaus Schulze and, indeed, Tears for Fears (brrrr). Influences that remind us that even sources which might not immediately capture the imagination (to put it mildly) can achieve profound value when they lend themselves to the creation of something singular. For their latest endeavor, Absolutely Elsewhere, the band from Denver, Colorado collaborated with notable musicians like Thorsten Quaeschning of Tangerine Dream and Hällas keyboardist Nicklas Malmqvist, who contributed rich piano, synth, and mellotron soundscapes. Additionally, Malte Gericke from Sijjin and Necros Christos provided death growls and German spoken-word vocals. The result hits the ball out of the park, straight into space. Here, the blasts of death dwell into ethereal realms with staggering musical substance. This collaboration has yielded a work that reaches a peculiar depth, with an unique sense of atmosphere. It’s as though Blood Incantation had merely uncovered another facet of a musical vision long latent within them. The interplay between gradual development and abrupt shifts becomes a central characteristic that here is shaped into perfection. Just as the listener becomes acclimated to this cosmic drift, there is a rupture. For instance, the transition between The Message (Tablet II) and The Message (Tablet III) is one of those serious eargasmic moments. With its nod to the melancholy of Pink Floyd (it even has a literally quote from Wish You Were Here), the music at the end of The Message (Tablet II) suddenly shifts—as the death metal from Tablet III crashes in, brutal and relentless. It is a moment akin to the mythic and divine forces embark in a cosmic cataclysm. One moment you are floating in the void; the next, the stars themselves are collapsing into a black hole.