Caligula

Synopsis

When his adored sister's death awakes him to a realisation of life's essential absurdity, the Roman emperor Caligula embarks upon an orgy of sexual depravity and sadistic cruelty in an apparently insane attempt to free himself from the shackles of mortality and morality. Based upon Albert Camus's existentialist response to the rise of Hitler and Stalin, but as topical as ever in the era of Saddam Hussein and Colonel Gaddafi, Detlev Glanert's 2006 opera - ?perhaps the finest German opera of the 21st century' (Tempo) - offers a disturbing insight into the self-destructive logic driving a decadent and dangerous dictatorship. Audacious young Australian director Benedict Andrews highlights the timeliness of the opera's themes by setting his UK premiere production in a football stadium, the kind of vast public arena within which dictators habitually play out their political games.

Our Review:

26 May 2012

If opera deals with humanity at its extremes – love, hate, revenge, death – then the life of Little Boots (to translate the sobriquet by which the Roman Emperor Gaius is universally remembered) is ripe for setting. Caligula, you’ll remember, was the bad, mad ruler whose murderous behaviour made Nero seem like a fireside fiddler. The name alone sounds like a venomous snake: a slithering body with a head that spits. Cca-ligula.

A good subject, then, but a badly chosen route into the material undermines German composer Detlev Glanert’s project. In opting to follow Albert Camus’ play Caligula rather than tailoring history to his own art form Glanert has steered his talents into a blind alley, since the source text is already so magnificently operatic that his music can do nothing but gild its poisoned lily.

The score is rich in variety and colour, redolent of Berg and Henze at times and making striking use of dark bras...

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