Berlin. (International).(Deutsche Oper Berlin performances)(Brief Article)

To add color to Deutsche Oper's Verdi repertoire, which currently consists of eleven works, the company presented the composer's Requiem, staged by painter-director-designer Achim Freyer. Opening night (Nov. 3) began with breathtaking images -- but after about twenty minutes, one felt relieved at the thought that this piece lasts only an hour and fifteen minutes, for already Freyer seemed to have run out of ideas, repeating his scenic material over and over again.

Illustrating the Requiem on a symbolic, allegorical and philosophical level rather than telling a story, Freyer developed a seemingly ceaseless, slow-moving flood of images in black, white and red. The stage was structured in three levels: on the lowest, the chorus, dressed in black and wearing masks suggesting skulls, sat on a stage elevator behind a black-gauze scrim. Whenever the scrim became transparent for a moment, the stage elevator moved slowly downward and disappeared into the stage floor -- resulting in the impression of hundreds of dead people being transported into an imaginary underworld.

Before this scrim, the tenor, bare-chested, painted white and called "The Lonesome One," was caught in a chimney that moved slowly from the left to the right. On the second, raked level, above the first one, countless fantastic figures (old people, children, one character symbolizing Hope, another Longing, a third War) walked from stage left to right, always taking the same slow tempo, always keeping the same distance apart. The mezzo, described in Freyer's version as "Death is a woman," resembled Frankenstein's Bride in a long, black fur coat and monstrous, pointed, red-silk breasts; the bass, here called "The Burdened One," looked like Frankenstein's monster, with a Death figure embracing him. They moved from left to right, ...