​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the young Mozart to showcase his talent in the prestigious genre of opera seria — a genre already considered somewhat outdated at the time, but one he sought to revitalize with innovative musical ideas.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