BERLIN: The Berlin Philharmonic tested the acoustics Thursday in a hangar at the city's Tempelhof Airport, the orchestra's second temporary venue following a fire last week that severely damaged the roof of its home.

Tempelhof's cavernous Hangar Two — occasionally used for rock concerts — had to be transformed into a makeshift concert hall for three performances this weekend of French composer Hector Berlioz' "Symphonie Fantastique" and the cantata "La Mort de Cléopâtre."

While the sound is nowhere near the quality enjoyed in the Philharmonic's usual home, which has been closed since the May 20 fire, neither director Sir Simon Rattle nor soloist Susan Graham seemed bothered.

"Sometimes the emergency helicopters take off and it's not so great. But otherwise, we're lucky," Rattle told The Associated Press at intermission during Thursday's dress rehearsal.

Only one landing is scheduled to take place during the Thursday concert.

"It will be during intermission, or during the softest part of my piece," Graham said, with a laugh. "My mind thinks 'Oh my God, I'm in an airplane hangar,' but the sound tells me something different."

Last weekend, a series of three sold-out concerts with the orchestra's former musical director Claudio Abbado was consolidated into one evening of music at the open-air Waeldbuhne venue, part of Berlin's Olympic Stadium complex.

Pamela Rosenberg, the orchestra's general manager, said she was pleased to have secured the hangar on such short notice, adding that "it's sort of an empty shell, basically, and all the infrastructure's been put in."

The Philharmonic had already booked Hangar Two for a performance next season of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen's "Gruppen," a massive musical work written for three orchestras that requires a massive space.

Performing the much more delicate Berlioz in the hangar could prove more difficult. Still, Rattle seemed confident that the venue, which was the hub of the Western allies' Berlin Airlift after World War II, would not affect the performance.

"I think the important thing is we play like we would always play. We don't try to make something different for the space," Rattle said, then added he thought that Berlioz would have loved the idea of his music being performed in an airport.

"(Berlioz) wrote a piece for when the railways were first invented. So I think he'd be very happy for us to be in an airport hangar."

The Philharmonic hopes to return to its home in downtown Berlin on June 2.

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A.J. Goldmann

BERLIN: A new staging of Verdi's "Un Ballo in Maschera" has been retooled for shock value, moving the setting to the smoking ruins of the World Trade Center and inserting liberal doses of flabby flesh and Hitler in drag.

The staging at the Theater Erfurt, which opened April 12 and runs through May 30, features singers dressed as Hitler, Uncle Sam and Marilyn Monroe. Oh, and there are 35 extras between the ages of 50 and 69 wearing nothing but Mickey Mouse masks to represent what director Johann Kresnik calls the "victims of capitalism."

"The American culture that Europe is drowning in cannot be separated from U.S. power politics," Kresnik said in an interview with The Associated Press. "That includes McDonald's, Mickey Mouse and also the culture of sex."

"A Masked Ball," a tale loosely based on the 1792 assassination of Swedish King Gustav III, has long been controversial. After objections from censors, Verdi moved the setting from Europe to colonial Boston for its premiere at Rome's Teatro Apollo in 1859.

Kresnik is proving that controversy sells.

An avalanche of negative reviews didn't prevent all performances from selling out before opening night. And while audience reaction has been mostly negative — with booing greeting some performances — opera fans have been packing the theater night after night.

The Austrian-born 68-year-old director is famous for his self-proclaimed Marxist bent and copious use of nudity.

As for the World Trade Center's ruins, he said it was an "unbelievably powerful and suggestive image" well-suited to a "new, highly political interpretation."

Opera productions with sex and violence are no rarity in Germany, known for its tradition of Regietheater, which gives directors unlimited license to update and reinterpret classic works, often with little regard for the intentions of the composer and librettist.

In Hans Neuenfels' 2000 staging of Verdi's "Nabucco" at the Deutsche Opera Berlin, Babylonians were dressed as giant bumblebees.

Kresnik defended his version of "Ballo," saying Verdi was forced to relocate the action.

"I changed neither Verdi's music nor his text. I simply have given the opera another interpretation," he said.

Kresnik said the idea was born after a visit to the U.S., where he choreographed Richard Strauss' "Der Rosenkavalier" in Maximilian Schell's production at the Los Angeles Opera three years ago.

He called the U.S. "the worst police state I've ever experienced. It's incredible how people there are treated, controlled, shaken down and surveilled."

Those feelings lingered, and he let them out in a barrage of bile with his latest production.

The Bild newspaper, Germany's biggest, likened the production to a "nightmare trip to Disneyland," and said it marked a new low in "vulgar kinkiness" on the German stage. The Erfurt-based Thueringer Allgemeine pronounced it "boring and infuriating" and said the production suffered from "inconsistency, clumsiness, logical blunders and general overstuffedness."

Kresnik was unfazed.

"On principle, I don't read any reviews," he said, adding that he's received a lot of hate mail from people he dubbed right-wingers.

He also blamed the negativity on pre-opening calls for a boycott by Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union, which runs the state government in the eastern state of Thuringia, of which Erfurt is the capital.

As for recruiting the naked extras, he says that proved surprisingly easy because of the legacy of former East Germany's fondness for nudism.

He disputed claims by the CDU that he had exploited cash-strapped pensioners.