The Abduction from the Seraglio
Musical comedy in three acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (18 years and up)
Libretto by Christoph Friedrich Bretzner, adapted by Johann Gottlieb Stephanie d. J.
Recommended from 18 years and up
2 hours 15 minutes (without intermission)
Introduction ... 30 minutes before the beginning of the performance, Foyer
We recommend the performance from ages 18 and up.
Debut Performance 1782 - Premiere on 20 June 2004
Since the middle of the nineties, the Catalan director Calixto Bieito, who was debuting with The Abduction from the Seraglio at the Komische Oper, is regarded as one of the most important and at the same time most controversial directors. He became famous with his concrete and expressive language in the way how to deal with classical texts. Calixto Bieito is a declared republican socialist and due to a Jesuit education, a radical director. He strives to create a kind of »Truth of the stage language« , by using non-palliated details to describe ordinary social milieus with just as drastic as well as brutal means to the basic structure of his staging. In his endeavour he is thoroughly comparable to Martin Scorsese or Luis Buñuel, and works above all with extreme images of violence and sexuality: »Sex as a quickly consuming article, sex as a glaring expressionist gesture. Sex is everywhere, in the TV, in the publicity for perfume or butter, everywhere. Only on the stage we do not want to see sex. We want to preserve the opera as a kind of paradise. But I want to touch people with the poetry of violence, with sex, with historic and politic situations of my country.«
While Bieito follows the emotional spectrum of couples in The Abduction from the Seraglio , he presents a direct connection between emotional hunger and violence in the relation of the sexes to each other. Pointed are the conditions and relations of power in a brothel, where women are treated and kept as slaves.
»What are we doing, when we love. What are we able to do for love, in love. What is love today, what is freedom.« (Calixto Bieito)