This is the second time that I am reporting from the Landestheater in Salzburg. The first post was on Zaide/Adama by Mozart and Czernowin. This time I’ll write about the premiere of Doris Dörrie’s staging of Mozart’s La Finta Giardiniera. Doris Dörrie is a well-known TV and film director in Germany, who debuted in opera directing in 2001 when she staged Cosi fan tutte at the Staatsoper in Berlin. Dörrie’s Finta is set in a modern-day garden center, full of plants, terra cotta statues, summer houses, flower tubs, box hedges. There are huge shelves with soil, garden tools, and seeds; there is a cash register, several benches, and chain saws. This production is really full of neat and surprizing details. Unfortunately Dörrie stages this opera like a TV film: everything falls neatly into place, apart from the stage props there is no relevance to our time. This is 18th-century opera for 21st-century TV audiences who are interested in love triangles and mix-up plots. Not very funny…

What was funny, though: the beautiful lady in the Versace dress eating sausages during the intermission at the cheap Würschtelstand (sausage stand) outside of the opera house. That was funny.

And there was also someone who was vey good tonight, and that was Adriana Kucerova. She sang the role of Serpetta. What a beautiful voice. What a good actress. Watch out for this young lady, she will go far. That I can promise.

This is the Landestheater on fire.