★★☆☆☆
Perhaps for Germans it has deep symbolism: reopening an opera house after a huge redevelopment that isn’t finished with a huge work that isn’t an opera. If so, the wheeze misfired. As boos greeted the ending of Schumann’s Scenes from Goethe’s Faust the sense of celebration that Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden is back in business all but evaporated.
In truth, the realisation that the company’s former intendant, Jurgen Flimm, and present music director, Daniel Barenboim, had contrived to concoct a pretentious and enervated flop had dawned hours before. Although the show started at 8pm, Angela Merkel and hundreds of other Berlin luminaries finally staggered out at close to midnight.
Mitigating factors? Some. Barenboim thought that the £350 million redevelopment — nearly £200 million