How about taking the most meta-opera out there and making it even more self-referential? That’s the approach director Robert Carsen took when his vision of Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos unfurled in February at Deutsche Oper Berlin (seen Feb. 19). This fascinating, frustrating, genre-bending work never seems quite certain about itself: the DOB transplant of this production, originally seen last year at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, boasted a cast that far outshone the staging.

Lithuanian soprano Violeta Urmana fit nicely into the shoes of the strutting diva of the title role. This is a role she has sung previously at the Met. At DOB, her performance was distinguished by crystalline clarity and effortless volume. Urmana’s bright-hued timbre gave way to darker shades as the evening progressed, making for a richer, more involved performance, a highlight of which was a full-throttle account of the gently ebbing “Es gibt ein Reich.”

Ruxandra Donose made an even stronger impression as the impetuous Composer, singing with undeniable ardor, an attractively thick texture and a velvety low range, as in her compelling account of “Sein wir wieder gut.” The Zerbinetta of Jane Archibald was alternately reverent and feisty, as in her quasi-love duet with the Composer. And even if the massive orchestral force occasionally drowned her out, she tore through her vocally punishing role with obvious relish and assurance, especially in the extensive coloratura writing. She nearly stole the show with her “Grossmächtige Prinzessin,” which was here elaborately choreographed with various paramours popping out of pianos that glided comically across the stage.

As in most Strauss, the men of Ariadne play a decidedly supporting role. That said, Roberto Saccà was indeed godlike as Bacchus, singing with Italianate grace (and a pinch of schmaltz) that made the opera’s close more fitting and dramatically convincing. Met veteran Lenus Carlson was in fine form as the levelheaded Music Teacher. And baritone Simon Pauly did solid work as Harlequin, particularly in the tuneful “Lieben, Hassen, Hoffen, Zagen.”

Carsen, one of Europe’s busiest directors, is probably best known to U.S. audiences for his striking Met production of Eugene Onegin. In this Ariadne, he tried so constantly to break through the fourth wall that most of his attempts at abstraction ended up seeming bland.

The house lights stayed on for the better part of the Prologue, and various characters walked through the audience to make their entrances. The production, which featured sets by Peter Pabst and costumes by Falk Bauer, switched awkwardly between elegance and absurdity, an obvious mirror of the tension in the score between opera seria and commedia dell’arte. The self-referential elements — the large mirrors that reflected the audience, the exposed lighting and the completely bare stage that the Composer walked onto at the end of the opera, to be greeted by the applause of the cast — quickly grew tiresome. One bright spot was Marco Santi’s smart and edgy choreography, which livened things immeasurably, especially in the otherwise static Act II.

The evening’s maestro, Jacques Lacombe, had difficulty giving shape to the sinewy, often manic Prologue, the backstage drama that occupies the work’s first half. The directorial shenanigans did much to reinforce an impression of general havoc onstage and in the pit. Lacombe took much firmer command of his musicians with the opera within an opera, starting with a delicate account of the tortuous G-minor overture and not letting up until the glittering apotheosis of the closing bars.

Richard Strauss’s Salome is an opera as emotionally unhinged as it is daringly modern. So one was interested to see what Achim Freyer, the controversial visionary behind Los Angeles Opera’s new production of the Ring cycle, would do to Strauss’s debauched heroine when Deutsche Oper Berlin revived his 2003 production in early February. The production images available on the company’s website promised that the evening would have its share of strangeness, and they probably had something to do with the poor attendance (seen Feb. 1).

I too had my reservations about what a Freyer Salome would look like, especially after seeing his recent Eugene Onegin at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden — a visually dazzling production that quickly ran out of ideas. With Salome, I was afraid that Freyer’s extreme distancing techniques would preclude genuine involvement in the relentless drama of the music. But it was precisely this quality about Salome that enabled Freyer’s spin to work. The high drama and breathless pace of a score tailored to suit a preexisting play were well served by this oddball, kooky production. With a staging concerned more with interpretation than with mere illustration, this Salome did not waste time over details of decor —the color of the heroine’s veils, the verisimilitude of the severed head — and thus spoke for itself.

Freyer’s Salome left the music exposed and pure, placing more demands than usual on the soprano who dares to take on this killer role. For this revival, the ravishing Manuela Uhl took up the challenge. Uhl — who obviously had no intention of being erased by the abstract, cartoonish sensibilities of this revival — created a Salome who was raw, energetic and passionate. She has an exciting, powerful voice and enough stamina to make it to the end of this punishing role. Her singing was fresh and convincing, if not always the picture of accuracy. Uhl ducked some high notes and decided to forgo some of the coloratura ornamentation, but her biggest problems were a weak low range — she often resorted to speaking — and exposed passaggio. She also pounced on her lines with an eagerness that, though not always in synch with the music, made for thrilling drama. Despite the shortcomings of her performance, the bulk of Strauss’s searing music sounded wondrous and convincing in her mouth, and aside from rough patches, her voice rang out with incredible volume and clarity from start to finish.

Uhl was supported by highly capable colleagues. Foremost among them was American baritone Alan Titus, the intense, booming Jochanaan. Chris Merritt, a lyric tenor with a background in Rossini operas, made an unexpectedly great Herodes, bringing out his character’s buffoonery and perversion with occasional Italianate embellishments. As his cutthroat wife Herodias, Hanna Schwarz sang like an avenging fury. Clemens Bieber — a DOB ensemble member — was a sympathetic and convincing Narraboth, declaiming his soaring, urgent lines with both finesse and an appealing ruggedness. The remaining roles were perfectly cast, from the Page of Julia Benzinger on down to the two Nazarenes.

The staging was as baffling as it was entrancing. The set appeared to have materialized out of a David Lynch dream sequence and resembled some kind of industrial carnival funhouse, with its numbered yellow factory doors and circus-like stage area. Much of the acting consisted of heightened, repeated gestures that took on a ritualistic aspect. This was complemented by the extremely clownish Expressionist makeup. The costumes were likewise irreverent and colorful, consisting of hand-drawn pinstriped suits and incorporating a childish variety of props, such as balloons for breasts, funnels and sand buckets for hats. One of the best touches was to number each of the Jews “1″ through “5.” All this added a magical, nursery-like feel to the narrative. The one misstep was an underwhelming dance of the seven veils, which was so confused and pedestrian that one wondered whether Freyer meant it as a comment on the evidently weaker quality of that music in comparison to the rest of the score.

At the helm of the massive orchestral force was Ulf Schirmer, whose account of the score mounted steadily in intensity, from the opening clarinet scale to the bone-crushing chords that describe Salome’s execution. In between, he was sensitive to the profusion of motifs and the score’s shimmering, exotic detail.

With an extensive Strauss celebration underway at Deutsche Oper Berlin, Staatsoper unter den Linden got in on the action in February with a sumptuously sung revival of Nicolas Brieger’s production of Der Rosenkavalier, conducted by Asher Fisch (seen Feb. 21).

The most compelling reason to see this revival was the role debut of Magdalena Kožená as Octavian. This is a character that fits the Czech mezzo like a glove: her performance was an all-around revelation. She delivered her opening lines, “Wie du warst, wie du bist!” in soft, luminous notes of heartbreaking beauty. She matched the impassioned horns effortlessly, which is no small feat. Her richly textured voice communicated a dramatic range from ardor to impetuousness to despair and devotion. Every phrase was carefully thought out, with an exciting deployment of rubato providing added force to the fluency of her singing, which was free of any breaks or gasps for air. This revival also capitalized on the androgynous aspect of Kožená’s beauty, which only added to the completeness of the incarnation.

Every bit as assured was the Marschallin of Angela Denoke, whose tragically noble performance reminded us that Princess Marie Thérèse is the most complex character in the opera. Denoke was here both more aristocratic and more nuanced than in her 2005 Rosenkavalier appearances at the Met, which marked her debut with that company. A pitch-perfect companion to Kozená, Denoke wavered between the earthy and the ethereal, placing equal value on the mellifluous and dramatic aspects of her performance. Her full yet silky voice contained both laughter and repressed sorrow.

Bass Peter Rose, another Met veteran, was vocally persuasive and perversely charming as Baron Ochs. He switched effortlessly among the duets, waltzes and arioso that this difficult character is required to pull off. All in all, he was so rudely charming that he threatened to tip the opera in his favor.

Sylvia Schwartz suffered from a problem common to most Sophies — being upstaged by the titanic forces of her costars. Her light, pretty voice was far from slight, but it was still obscured in her Act II duet with Octavian and in the transcendent Act III trio.

The supporting roles were judiciously cast, with Paul O’Neill making a memorable impression as the Italian Tenor. Curiously, O’Neill came out in a wheelchair to sing “Di rigori armato” with requisite lyricism and fervor that won him peals of spontaneous applause.

The audience was less kind to conductor Asher Fisch, who took his bow amid persistent boos. Apparently, Berlin felt cheated by a performance that consciously sacrificed much of the work’s Viennese elegance for a courser, darker interpretation. From the weighty, muscular tempo of the opening bars and the lusty strings and winds somewhat obscured by the horns, it was clear that Fisch was intent on taking things in a different direction.

Brieger’s elegant production matched the refinement and taste on display in the singing. The direct, striking design brought to mind both Ruth Berghaus and Gilbert Defloe. The versatile horseshoe-shaped set morphed ingeniously from the decaying elegance of the Marschallin’s bedroom to the bourgeois trappings of the Faninal residence to the seedy inn of the closing act. The only false note the production struck was in the jumbled chaos of the Baron’s aborted seduction.

A. J. GOLDMANN

I am forever being told by veteran opera-lovers, “They don’t sing like they used to.” Perhaps this explains why certain works in the repertoire have lost their places of prominence or have been eliminated altogether: we simply no longer have the voices required to do them justice. Gounod’s Faust is hardly an obscure work, but the rate at which it is staged today is paltry when compared to the popularity it enjoyed before World War II. So it was thrilling (and transporting) to see a Faust at the Berlin Staatsoper unter den Linden so expertly sung that one understood the seductive spell it cast over audiences in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries (seen Feb. 22).

For its new production, the Staatsoper enlisted the talents of superb singers whose bravura performances cut through the dimmer inspirations of director Karsten Wiegand’s uneven staging.

Before the curtain went up, an announcement was made that two cast members, Charles Castronovo, the Faust, and Roman Trekel, the Valentin, would be singing despite colds. If anything, this inauspicious news only made the ensuing three and a half hours more impressive and thrilling. Castronovo, a New York-born lyric tenor, was somewhat throaty in the opening scene, with hesitant low notes. He was a bit off in the reprise of “A moi les plaisirs” with the devil, but he warmed up quickly. Before long, he was singing with heroic and darkly lacquered tones. He gasped certain phrases out suspensefully and projected others with an otherworldly quiver.

The sublime Russian soprano Marina Poplavskaya, best known to New York audiences for her performance as Natasha in the 2007 Met revival of Prokofiev’s War and Peace, was cast in the punishing role of Marguerite: she sang with fierce determination and unrelenting brazenness. It was a sensational performance, but one also worried about the toll that singing like that might take on the young soprano’s voice. She delivered an expressive and bouncy “Il était un roi de Thule” in a clear, restrained manner, then made a fluid transition to a wildly coquettish “Je ris de me voir si belle,” with delicious coloratura technique and an abundance of expressive muscle. It was but one climax in a performance with too many to highlights to enumerate.

As Méphistophélès, Réne Pape was — forgive the sacrilegious locution — absolutely godlike. He snickered and jeered though this wonderfully wicked role and let his character’s evil seep through most effectively in the quieter moments. His voice sounded effortlessly big, smoothly seductive and appropriately serpentine.

Despite his cold, Trekel struck the right tone as Valentin, his complex, robust voice communicating his character’s brotherly concern — as in his deeply felt “Avant de quitter ces lieux” — but also encompassing the rage and venom of Act IV. Silvia de la Muela sang Siébel with appropriate ardor and conviction.

Wiegand, a young German stage director who made his debut at the Staatsoper in 2006 with Maria Stuarda, provided an infuriatingly garish and amateurish Act I, setting the action at a raucous casino/house party. The noisy thrashing around brought to mind the rave that Calixto Bieito choreographed for his atrocious 2006 production of Wozzeck in Barcelona.

The casino set was moved away for Act II, which unfolded on a bare stage surrounded by silver-leafed walls — minimal yet all-around exquisite setting for this act that made the work uncommonly fluid by eliminating the need for clunky transitions between various set pieces. During Marguerite’s ascension, the walls lifted majestically to reveal the chorus seated at a heavenly banquet attired in tuxedos and cocktail dresses.

The stomach-churning touches of Wiegand’s production — Marguerite dashed her newborn’s brains against the wall and, in the end, slashed her own throat with a brooch — provided a jolting dose of realism to the otherwise abstract staging.

The version used for this production made the traditional cuts of the ballet and the Walpurgisnacht scene but included sporadic dialogue. Alain Altinoglu’s conducting was sweeping and sensitive. He made some daring decisions, slowing down to an almost dangerous level during the more introspective arias and favoring an all-around expansive approach that added an extra twenty minutes to the show’s running time. But then again, it’s hard to have too much of a good thing.

In all 51 institutions participated in the marathon-like event, presenting full and truncated programs that ranged from African drumming to Verdi and Mozart to cabaret to political satire to clubbing.

(Below: A map of participating venues and how to get there)

Tickets for the evening were a meager 15 Euros, which included transportation via a fleet of shuttle buses that zipped from north to south and east to west - and were consistantly packed all evening long.

I began my evening at the Staatsoper unter den Linden (see image below), where crowds a thousand strong were waiting to see a program of excerpts from the Magic Flute (Zauberflöte) that was performed on the hour. The crowds and queues I encountered at the Staatsoper were harbingers of things to come: the staggering turn-out made this particular “Long Night” a logistical nightmare.

By dint of pure luck, I managed to talk my way into the first tier of the theater, where I stood and enjoyed an obstructed view of the performance - though, in truth, I was more interested in observing the enthusiastic audience and the thunderous applause they gave to Papageno and the Queen of the Night.

Afterwards, I walked to the nearby Komische Oper, where that evening’s performance of Traviata was being projected outside for the benefit of a crowd fressing themselves with Bratwurst and pretzels in the soothing spring evening.

The mob in front of the KOB was even more impressive than at the Staatsoper. No one seemed to have much of an idea of what was in store for them. This turned out to be a selection of Verdi marches and arias performed in the foyer by a “Salon Orchestra” and KOB ensemble members.

The salon orchestra “Illusion” plays a light Verdi medley

Soprano Erika Roos sings “Merche diletta amiche”from I Vespri Siciliani

Meanwhile, in the baroque opera house itself, a baffling DJ set / lightshow was taking place. Most seemed as confused as I was by DJ Jürgen Grözinger, who was spinning opera LPs while drenched in a blue light.

After an ill-fated attempt at seeing a Bulgakov play at the Maxim-Gorki theater, I sallied forth to the Admiralspalast for a preview of the German version of Mel Brooks’ musical “The Producers,” which makes its début at that theater in mid-May.

It is forbidden by German law to display Nazi insignias anywhere outside of an educational or dramatic setting. Unfortunately, there’s no dispensation for satire, which means no swastika armbands or dancing in formation during the classic “Springtime for Hitler” number. In place of swastikas the actors wear red-black-and-white armbands with pretzels on them.

(Below: girls in the theater lobby in stereotypical German dress promote “The Producers”)

The program at the Admiralspalast kicked off with an effectively schmaltzy band that performed a “Berlin Revue” that included a suitably nostalgic and mushy performance of “Du gehst durch all meine Träume.”

1941’s “Du gehst durch all meine Träume”at the Admiralspalast

The principle cast members of “The Producers” were introduced and performed some scenes of dialogue and music from the show. Cornelius Obonya uncannily channeled Nathan Lane as Max Bialystock. Andreas Bieber made a less winning impression with his annoyingly whiny Leo Bloom. Herbert Steinböck made Franz Liebkin into a lovable (psychotic) dope and had the audience in stiches during some Chaplinesque double talk (Hear audio excerpt below). And Bettina Mönch was a delightful ditz as the Swedish bombshell Ulla.

Audio except of a scene from the Berlin production of”The Producers”

Ulla (Bettina Mönch) sings “When You’ve Got It, Flaunt It”

Max (Cornelius Obonya) and Leo (Andreas Bieber) sing “We Can Do It”

Next door to the Admiralspalast is the Kabaret Distel, which performs political satire (get those images of Joel Grey out of your head). On exiting the Producers preview, I somehow got swept into the Distel’s performance of “Jenseits von Angela” (a none-too-clever pun on the German title of Isaak Dinesen’s memoir), which - judging from the audience’s reactions - must have been wickedly funny, though I understood precious little aside from easy puns and slapstick.

(Below: The Distel Kabaret)

At the beginning of the evening, six hours had sounded to me far too short a time period to enjoy such a cultural smörgåsbord (those accent marks are courtesy of spell check, not me!). With the evening nearly at an end (it was close to one a.m.) I was starting to get exhausted. Still, I felt I should milk the evening for all it was worth and, so, found myself at 12:50 riding the last shuttle bus #5 into Tiergarten - Berlin’s central park - to the famed Tipi der Zelt. Tipi is a throwback to the good old days of Berlin nightclub culture. In a city that is very suspect of nostalgia, the roaring 20s is practically the only epoch of the 20th century that people continue to romanticize. (Is there really much else to be proud of?)

I arrived just in time to catch the final number in a colorful and campy drag show: an irreverent and batty conclusion to my very full evening.

(Below: drag show at Tipi der Zelt)

Of Berlin’s three opera houses, the Komische its Berlin is the least likely to bring in big names, preferring to rely in large measure on their ensemble singers. So it was surprising that the legendary Anja Silja — a Berlin native — chose to make her Komische Oper Berlin debut in late January, at the age of sixty-eight, in a new production of Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades by Thilo Reinhardt (seen Jan. 25). The Old Countess is a relatively recent entry in the soprano’s repertory: she learned the role two years ago for a production in Vienna. But while Silja was the production’s main selling point, the real star was director Reinhardt, who conceived a beautiful and irreverent German-language production. The German text was credited to Bettina Bartz and Werner Hintze. (Incidentally, it was in this language that the opera was given its New York premiere in 1910, conducted by Gustav Mahler at the Metropolitan Opera.)

Reinhardt, a former assistant to Achim Freyer and Ruth Berghaus, fashioned a highly successful art deco mise-en-scéne. The set, designed by Paul Zoller, seemed to have been modeled on Manhattan’s Chrysler Building, with reflective elevators providing elegant exits and entrances; the green and yellow color scheme reflected in the wall paper, the sofas and tables was brought out to great effect by the expressive lighting of Franck Evin. The outlandish costumes by Katharina Gault were in keeping with the 1930s décor. Reinhardt’s staging also contained unexpected moments of brutality (sometimes a bit overdone) and brought to mind the director’s marvelous 2007 production of Contes d’Hoffmann, one of the best for this risk-taking house.

A highlight was the Act II Intermezzo performance of Daphnis and Chloe, choreographed by Robert Heimann. Chloe was done up as Little Bo Peep, and Daphnis, none too subtly, wielded a hammer and sickle and wore blue overalls; his rival, Plutus, was on stilts, wearing a gold tuxedo and matching top hat. The stagehands were vixens in white boots and pink miniskirts and feather hats, and Chloe’s flock was made up of choristers in business suits and sheep masks. The irreverence of this pastorale was balanced by the chilling entrance devised for the Tsarina, here represented by a skeleton in a display case carried onstage by Orthodox monks.

The singing was a bit patchy, although not without its moments of discovery. The evening’s Gherman was Kor-Jan Dusseljee, a KOB regular whose powerful voice often sounded raw and exposed: he showed his true mettle — and his worthiness to take on such a demanding role — in the more dramatic scenes of the opera. In his first scene with Lisa, his Gherman urged Lisa to kill him with his own gun — and surprisingly, Dusseljee sang better at gunpoint. His descent into madness (which here included cross-dressing and sexual suggestions with the Countess) was frighteningly convincing. Before the Act II climax, Dusseljee sounded clipped and understated amid the tense music, but he gained in confidence and ability during the scene’s violent conclusion.

As Lisa, Orla Boylan landed big high notes, full of emotion if a bit too aspirated. Her pleasant trill was nicely controlled, but her midrange was tepid. She showed some shrillness when she reached for too big an effect — a regular occurrence in this overtly emotional performance.

Other male standouts included baritone Philip Horst as Count Tomsky, the officer who first tempts Gherman with the knowledge of the Countess and her curse (“Odnazhdy v Versale”), and the easygoing tenor Thomas Eberstein, a KOB stalwart who pulled off his role of Chekalinsky with perverted glee. Mirko Janiska made a dashing impression as Prince Yeletsky, especially during his bold and arduous “Ja vas lyublyu,” in which he presented Lisa with a tiger-fur coat.

And then there was Silja, the center of attention as the eponymous “Queen of Spades.” Early on — although her high notes were shockingly incisive — Silja seemed unstable vocally: her midrange is now fairly threadbare, she often resorted to a near-speaking voice for low passages, and there were some exposed breaks in her voice, especially in the passaggio. During her principal scene in Act II, she broke off inelegantly at the ends of phrases, but she nailed her aged character’s melancholy and tragedy. Despite her highly audible imperfections, it was a thrill to see Silja onstage again. This role could become one of her late-career specialties: Martha Mödl, after all, sang the Old Countess well into her late eighties.

The other female standout was mezzo-soprano Karolina Gumos as Pauline, who sang her single aria “Podrugi milyye,” with its generous piano accompaniment, amid choristers who downed vodka shots. She sang with zest and relish, her voice darkening after she took a swig from the bottle.

The chorus was most effective during Act III, where Reinhardt made his only blunder as director. During the final scene, Lisa was dragged around the stage, humiliated, beaten and possibly raped, as her fiancé, now enraged by her love for Gherman, did nothing to intercede. It was a brutal and pointless misstep in an otherwise clearly realized production.

Alexander Vedernikov led a curiously muted account of the score that often relegated the orchestra to a supporting role, but which made highlighted instruments stand out forcefully, as it did some sloppy work from the horns. One sensed that Vedernikov was up to something — and by the final scene, he let loose the orchestra with suitable demonic fury.

A. J. GOLDMANN