Theatre of war

Elsewhere in Europe, there is still some discussion of at least dampening the prolific output of Russian artists, though despite the best efforts of the Kremlin propaganda machine, there is no sign of the supposed “cancellation” of Russian culture. Russian theatre professionals face no such issues in Germany, however, where each director decides for themself whether to work with an artist or not, and where theatres and opera houses continue to collaborate with artists from Russia whether they’ve left the country or not, sometimes in the face of protests from their Ukrainian colleagues.

Before the theatre season came to a close, Natasha Kiseleva met Philip Bröking, the artistic director of the Komische Oper in Berlin, to ask what he thinks about working with Russia, the prospects of Russian emigrants and the limits of compromise.

Philip Bröking has for 20 years been the artistic director of Berlin’s Komische Oper, where this season world-renowned Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov premiered his production of The Marriage of Figaro, the second part of his trilogy based on the works of Mozart. Natasha Kiseleva asked Bröking what he thought about working with Russia, the prospects of Russian emigrants and the limits of compromise.

NGE: Do you currently maintain relationships with theatres in Russia?

PB: No, we have severed ties, even though our theatre had successfully toured in Moscow since the GDR days. Our operas were performed at the Bolshoi Theatre. We maintained warm relations with Vladimir Urin even when he was in charge of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre and then when he was director of the Bolshoi Theatre. But now that’s all impossible for both ethical reasons and for security issues. Going to Moscow now would simply be dangerous for me and all my employees, although I used to go to Moscow very often for performances. That’s how we met Kirill. I went to performances at the Gogol Center. We were preparing the first opera when he was already under house arrest.

NGE: How do you feel about Berlin literally becoming the new theatrical Moscow?

PB: On the one hand, it’s very sad that people have been forced to leave their homeland, but remember how Jewish composers and musicians left Germany for the US and changed Hollywood and Broadway, taking them to another level. Berlin now looks like Paris after the 1917 revolution. This enriches our culture and makes it even more diverse.

NGE: Is everyone ready for this new wave? Serebrennikov’s The Marriage of Figaro is an anti-capitalist and feminist manifesto. Cherubino’s character has no words, but his girlfriend, an opera singer, becomes his voice. The female characters are in the foreground. Beaumarchais obviously didn’t have all these subtexts. How did your audience take this new reading?

PB: Full halls and full houses speak for themselves. Opera is always developing, and the theatre must meet the challenge of the modern era, even with classical works. There is a stereotype that opera is art for the older generation. Young people are often afraid of our genre, but I am sure that if they see Serebrennikov’s Figaro, they’ll fall in love with it. He is a very smart and subtle director who works meticulously with classics, adapting them into a modern and relevant form, which the audience definitely likes.

NGE: He did this with Russian classics at the Gogol Center and helped an audience discover the theatre that had never gone before. Three dramatic actors — not opera singers — from the Gogol Center performed in Figaro. Do you see differences when working with Russian and German artists and directors?

PB: The differences, of course, are in the communication. I don’t mean with the public. I mean the communication between the author and the work. German directors and actors keep a distance between themselves and the story they tell, not letting it get too close. They continue the tradition of Bertolt Brecht’s Berlin Ensemble and his theory of epic theatre, with its principle of distance between the actor and the character. Brecht’s theory influenced both German and European theatrical culture in general. Russian directors and actors tell stories in a completely different way, tearing their hearts out, letting the viewer get very close. For the German public, this may seem too emotional or too much, but different approaches also enrich the theatre. I said earlier that we no longer work with Russian theatres, but we cannot stop working with artists from Russia — there are great voices there. 

NGE: Is the political position of the people you work with important to you?

PB: The basic democratic principle is the freedom of choice of any individual. We have American artists and musicians in our troupe who may be Trump supporters. I don’t like him, to put it mildly, but that has nothing to do with the work we do together. Moreover, the theatre is always about different points of view, about discussion and dialogue. Without it, it simply wouldn’t exist.

NGE: Have you faced criticism for working with a Russian director during the war? 

PB: I don’t think Russian culture should be abolished because of Kremlin policy. When we create art, we are not Germans, Ukrainians, Russians or Americans, we are artists. And artists have no nationality. Some critics rejected Serebrennikov’s modern interpretation, with several writing that it was not Mozart, which is an absolutely normal and expected reaction to something innovative and unusual. There are many examples of performances that were scandalous some 20 years ago, but are now classics. That’s also to do with the evolution and dynamics of the theatre. But I want to say that the reaction of both critics and viewers also depends on the region. What is successful in Berlin may fail in Saxony and vice versa.

NGE: Who are the audience for Serebrennikov’s operas?

PB: Our regular viewers, Berliners who love art. The Russian language can significantly affect the audience, of course, and more Russians will come to an opera in Russian, but the origin of the director or actors doesn’t affect the make-up of the audience, of the people who come to the performance. And Serebrennikov’s The Marriage of Figaro was in Italian, as is traditional.

NGE: There is a view in Russia that theatre and culture in general have an educational function, that art should teach you something. Do you agree?

PB: I don’t think that the theatre should educate the public, we are not an educational institution. The Berlin audience is more than educated. It doesn’t need to be taught anything. Art is a joint process of evolution for both the public and the theatre. Some things work, some don’t. Sometimes it’s a success, sometimes it’s a failure, and sometimes there’s difficulty with financing. We evolve together with our audience, and as a producer it is interesting for me to be a participant in art as a process.