This month, Klaus Guth, one of the most important and sought-after opera directors of our time (representing a wide repertoire in all major theaters), received his due. On May 25, he opens a new production of Wagner’s masterful latest opera, Parsifal, at Barcelona’s historic Lyceum Theatre, and at the same time, since last week, his La bohème is playing again at the Paris Opera – perhaps the most original production of the project. story!

We first met in London in March 2020, during the rehearsals of Janacek’s Enufa at Covent Garden (the production was canceled due to COVID and played last season) and most recently in Naples after the atmospheric and interesting production of Don Carlos. At our first meeting, he arrived backstage on a stylish bike that he carries with him wherever he goes around the world “because I have a comforting note from my house.”

This habit alludes to one of the characteristics that makes Guth perhaps the most “human” of modern directors: the extraordinary tenderness with which he approaches such operatic characters as Sesto and Emperor Titus in the outstanding production of Mozart’s last opera at the Glydebourne Festival. “Often, psychologists and psychoanalysts, after seeing my productions, ask me if I studied any of these disciplines and if I ever worked as a psychotherapist. Of course not! But it’s all about sensitivity and observation. In my youth, I came to the theater with my own concept and I always imposed it on everyone. I was afraid that if I was flexible it would damage my eyesight. Now I know that a good director must combine determination with flexibility, understand others and be receptive to their ideas.

Another characteristic of Gut is that his productions are always aesthetically perfect, which is rare and almost unheard of these days for German directors. “That’s something I always emphasize to my set designers. This is a decisive factor, especially when we present an original and possibly controversial view of the project. The more innovative or extreme the concept, the more beautiful the setting should be. Because that way the public will be much more inclined to agree with you and accept your point of view.”

An example of this approach is the magical, romantic, but groundbreaking production of La bohème at the Paris Opera in 2017 (and on repeat now), set on a space station and ultimately on the moon. As expected, this caused a strong reaction from the public. At the dress rehearsal, where the audience was no more than 28 people, he was deified. At the premiere, she caused a strong reaction, 50% for and about the same against! So how did this original concept come about?

“When Stéphane Lisner, then CEO of the Paris Opera, asked me to direct La bohème, I warned him that while I love the music of the show and would die for it, I hate all the clichés about artists living in attics. Jokingly, I told him that when I listen to his music, I think about the Cosmos. I meant that music without words gives me the feeling not of a small attic, but of a huge space, a plain.

Then I read the novel on which the libretto is based, Henri Murger’s Scenes des Bohemians, in which each of the three old men recalls and tells the other two of his youth. So the “memory” factor is present at the birth of a work! So I decided to get rid of the cliches that follow it and continue with the original story. Then I said to myself: “Let’s take one more step forward.” How crazy would it be to be in a situation where you realize you don’t have long to live? What are you doing; You survive by thinking about the best things from your past. You draw them in your mind and start talking about them.

“I thought I would get rid of the cliches that follow it and continue with the original story. Then I said to myself: “Let’s take one more step forward.”

“Then the idea came to me that this is happening on a space station that starts to malfunction and the astronauts end up landing on the moon and dying on the moon. I told Lissner that such a concept would be a huge risk for the theatre. And I love him for the answer: “I believe in your vision and will support you to the end!” So the curtain opens on the space station, where four astronauts in full space suit (actors corresponding to Rodolfo, Marcello, Kline and Sonar) are trying to fix a malfunction. This takes several days. But they do not succeed, and they gradually realize that they will not be able to return to Earth.

Gut turned to NASA for information about what happens to the human brain when oxygen is diluted – and this information is projected as subtitles on the station every day. Gradually, the astronauts begin to hallucinate and remember their past, and the stage, always located inside the space station, turns into a “bohemian” setting, the singers enter, and the opera unfolds as we know it. In the end, the astronauts land on the moon, in a wonderful white world, where the dying Rodolfo imagines Mimi coming for him. She is such a “bohemian” that whoever sees her will definitely not forget her …

Don Juan

Gut’s next direction at the Paris Opera will be the opening of the 2023-24 season in September with a new production of Don Giovanni, the work with which he won the 2008 Salzburg Festival (collaboration with the leading festival also included two other operas in the Mozart trilogy to the libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, “The Marriage of Figaro” and “That’s All They Do”).

“This work is a unique masterpiece, incomparable to any other! Wow! It jumps like a whirlwind from intensity to intensity. Sometimes the best productions come out of the duel with the work, and here it was. I thought: “How do I approach the character, who is usually, especially in recent times, treated with very little sympathy? How can I get into his psyche and mind? What is real in his life and what is fantasy? Such an insatiable thirst and passion for life … from where and from where? “. looking for clues that would help me understand it, a key idea came to me: Does all this insatiable appetite for life and its pleasures come from knowing that you are nearing your end?Because the entire plot of this opera unfolds in a few hours. viewers, we are witnessing the last hours of Don Juan’s life and watching him try to squeeze as much life as possible into the little time he has left.

Thus, during my ascent, Don Juan is seriously wounded in a duel with the commander and consciously experiences all his adventures mortally wounded. From the moment I conceived the idea, it has been a pleasure to work with this unique project and its hero, especially as we were able to secure the perfect cast with Christopher Maltman as Don Juan and Erwin Schrott as Leporello. Physically, they both exude extreme, manic energy and have added a new dimension to what I consider to be one of the best productions of my career” (there is a video on the Euroarts label).

Will the production we see in Paris be on the same wavelength? “I won’t tell you because I want it to be a surprise!”

Performances of “La Boheme” in Paris will continue on May 23, 26, 30 and June 1, 4.