Ger­man sing­spiel in three acts K. 384 (1781/82)
Lib­retto: based on Chris­toph F. Bret­zn­er by Jo­hann Got­tlieb Stephanie the Young­er, ad­ap­ted by Stefan Her­heim and Wolfgang Wil­laschek

The plot couldn’t be sim­pler: the Span­ish no­ble­man Bel­monte must free his fiancée Kon­stan­ze, her Eng­lish maid Blonde and Bel­monte’s ser­vant Pedrillo from the clutches of the Turk­ish Bassa, or Pasha, Se­lim. Bel­monte must sneak in­to the pasha’s seraglio and sneak back out again, all the while elud­ing and out­smart­ing Os­min, the over­seer of the har­em. With his Salzburg pro­duc­tion of 2003, young Nor­we­gi­an dir­ect­or Stefan Her­heim raised a storm of con­tro­versy that con­tin­ued to crackle in 2006, when the pro­du­citon was re­vised for the Moz­art 22 cycle.

The con­tro­versy was largely due to the fact that Her­heim trans­posed the events to the in­ner world of the hu­man psyche. The har­em is no longer a real har­em, but a psy­cho­lo­gic­al place fo long­ing and de­sire, en­ti­cing and yet threat­en­ing at the same time. The en­tire exot­ic, Jan­is­sary scenery gives way to the more fa­mil­i­ar im­ages of one’s own sexu­al urges and im­pulses. The pro­duc­tion re­volves around the ques­tion how does a man get a wo­man? To get to the bot­tom of this age-old ques­tion, Her­heim shows how men and wo­men try to seek hap­pi­ness to­geth­er and fail since they are caught in con­ven­tions and sub­ser­vi­ent to their in­ner demons – il­lus­trated here by Os­min as pir­i­est and dev­il. "It is a gen­es­is, the be­gin­ning of all be­gin­nings, when man is sep­ar­ated in­to two sexes, dis­or­i­ented, and from then on seeks to re­turn to his ori­gin­al form in ever new con­stel­la­tions," ex­plains Her­heim. On the sur­face, everything is in mo­tion; be­low, or­der rules – but it is an or­der that is of­ten lost in every­day life.

Laura Aikin, Kon­stan­ze
Valentina Far­cas, Blonde
Charles Castro­novo, Bel­monte
Di­et­mar Ker­schbaum, Pedrillo
Franz Haw­lata, Os­min

Moz­ar­teum Or­ches­tra Salzburg
Konzer­tver­ein­i­gung Wien­er Staat­so­per­n­chor

Ivor Bol­don, con­duct­or
Stefan Her­heim, stage dir­ect­or
Tomáš Šimerda, video dir­ect­or

Re­cord­ing dates: 03.08.| 08.08.| 10.08.2006
Ven­ue: House for Moz­art