First: The obvious (in German):

Musikalische Leitung: Alejo Pérez
Inszenierung: Peter Konwitschny
Bühne und Kostüme: Johannes Leiacker
Licht: Reinhard Traub
Chor: Christoph Heil
Dramaturgie: Bettina Bartz

Medea: Cornelia Ptassek
Iason: Sebastian Kohlhepp
Kreon: Shigeo Ishino
Kreusa: Josefin Feiler
Neris: Helene Schneiderman
1. Brautjungfer: Aoife Gibney
2. Brautjungfer: Fiorella Hincapié
Mit: Staatsopernchor Stuttgart, Staatsorchester Stuttgart

Peter Konwitschny is one of those, who have a distinct hand in doing their stagings. This has been my 10th staging from him, and I liked it!

Peter, like Calixto, is one of those, who know, how to make singers act and perform. And in an opera, which has the topic of a split marriage and the children as topics of battle between ex-wife and husband, and them being sacrificed on the altar of this marriage-gone-wrong is a topic, which needs a guiding hand in staging.

Peter places the first two acts into a kitchen placed onto the beach of greece. This kitchen becomes cluttered with debris over time, just like humanity uses this planet as a resource, that we all assume as granted, and nothing worth caring about. This attitude of neglect also transpires into the actions of all acting people, there’s none, who really cares. In act three, the back-walls of the kitchen are removed, and we see the sea cluttered in plastic debris, just like the characters have been “just using” all living items for their own pleasure and benefit.

It’s a strong staging in using this child-murder theme to make us think about how we murder our planet. A typical Konwitschny, and a very good one!