LEAR

2024 Hannover Staatsoper Music Aribert Reimann Libretto Claus H. Henneberg Conductor Stephan Zilias Set Tom Scutt Movement Director Jenny Ogilvie Costume Evie Gurney Cast Pawel Brozek / Angela Denoke / Fabio Dorizzi / Nico Holonics / Kiandra Howarth / Kiandra Howarth / Robert Künzli / Michael Kupfer-Radecky / Marco Lee / Darwin Prakash / Frank Schneiders / Yannick Spanier / Richard Walshe / Nils Wanderer / Meredith Wohlgemuth Production photography Sandra Then

“Staatsoper Hannover engaged the English theatre director Joe Hill-Gibbins, who has several Shakespeare plays to his credit and whose previous opera productions include Thomas Adès’s Powder Her Face and Mozart’s Figaro. Neither of those prepared me for the excoriating impact of this Lear…Scutt’s set comprises cardboard boxes neatly arranged as a symbolic representation of the solidity and pristine stability of Lear’s regime. Soon the structure collapses as hydraulic lifts undermine its foundations and the characters roam among the ‘rubble’ symbolising the ruin of Lear’s realm… It moved me as never before. Done as impressively as this, Reimann’s Lear is German Musiktheater at its most compelling” Operalogue

“A performance of remarkable musical and scenic unity... The dominant element on the stage are many cardboard boxes, initially built into a giant cube. As Lear's power falters, the more fragile this cube becomes until, in one of the performance’s most memorable moments, it collapses completely... As the protagonists play with the boxes, arranging them in ever-changing formations, Hill-Gibbins succeeds in penetrating deeply into the psychology of the characters, and making it tangible” Online Merker