Watch out, she's got a gun!

Pockets of buildings like this dot the neighborhood, neglected for the past 65 years. Some have bullet holes from the Russian invasion in 1945. To recap: President Roosevelt, inexplicably smitten by Uncle Joe Stalin in Yalta, agreed not to march into Berlin before the Russians did. Witnessing this, Churchill correctly predicted a Cold War. He pointed to the Russians’ abandonment of the Warsaw citizenry to Hitler’s goons as proof that Russia would go on to seize Poland after Hitler was buried. Which it did. Followed by the annexation of Eastern Europe, the building of the Berlin Wall, and the political sickness that gripped this place for 30 years.



Anyway, this building. It overlooks the S-Bahn tracks behind my building. There is a bridge there where you can watch them glide by, whisper-quiet. Come to think of it, the neighborhood’s main drag, Schonhauser Allee, has a Chicago-y feel to it because of the elevated S-Bahn tracks that run its length.

Which brings us to tonight’s “Armida” by Christoph Gluck, a seldom-staged and recorded work. The story is conventional enough: Armida tells a group of Crusaders about being deposed as queen in a gambit to snare her lover, Rinaldo. He says fuck this, I’m going with my Crusade buddies, and Armida goes nuts, extracting her revenge. But we’re in Berlin, where director’s theater or “Regietheater” is in the ascendance -- meaning the story is a picnic of mutilation, torture and nudity. And Rinaldo isn't going on the Crusades; it looks like he's heading to the gym. Some bemoan this Tarantino-ization of the opera house, but I’ve got an open mind. That’s Armida in the blue powersuit getting her pistol-whip on. (Photo from Operachic.com) It was a kerr-azy performance, made all the more bizarre by the ultra-orthodox score by Gluck -- baroque on the cusp of classical. This is what I saw: 1) An old woman in a wedding dress shuffles on stage, only to have her eyes plucked out by Armida and a pal of Rinaldo. The woman lies on stage for several minutes with blood oozing out of her eye sockets. 2) Fifteen naked men do pushups while two pairs of men wearing boxing gloves spar and a blood-drenched dude wearing a goat mask watches. 3) Act 3 opens with Armida strutting onto the stage wearing a bustier and panties, carrying a 9 millimeter semiautomatic. Rinaldo follows close behind, wearing Speedos, sunglasses, and a live albino python wrapped around his body. So, what of "Regietheater"? I think good art can result from discordant elements. If this "Armida" had been staged in period costume and norms, would the opera house be even half full? And though it was played with warm workmanship by the 40-member Komische Oper orchestra, this is a middling musical piece by a guy who thought Mozart was radical. On the other hand, if this theatrical staging were accompanied by the sounds of Berg or Stockhausen, it would be unbearably modern, its sharp edges making for a long night. Only a half-glass-is-empty observer could see this as an abduction of opera, rather than a liberation of it.

I tried to surreptitiously record video of Armida strangling a dude with a phone cord while singing an aria, but all I got was the railing in front of me. As small consolation, you can see video of the cast taking their bows below.


Tomorrow? "Die Fledermaus," directed by the Swarthy Lion himself, Zubin Mehta. Preceded, I hope, by some touristy stuff.