Waveforms in the air
4 – 11 October 2025
Saturday 4 October
To Berlin by plane. With its main theatre closed for renovation, the Komische Oper set up a temporary stage in Tempelhof Airport’s monumental Hangar 4 for a large-scale production of Jesus Christ Superstar, a fifty-five-year-old property that still packs a hearty punch. Tempelhof, a Nazi-era emblem of Modernist architecture, ceased operations in 2008 to become a multi-purpose public space. The building alone, with its famous vertical windows, would have justified the trip. Yet Andreas Homoki’s staging matched the setting’s scale and turned out to be a feast for eyes and ears alike. The “arena treatment” suits Jesus Christ Superstar perfectly, and the vocal power and acting chops of the cast all but raised the roof.
Sunday 5 October
Back to Paris by plane. Claus Guth’s “outer-space” La Bohème for the Opéra de Paris premiered in 2017, yet I was seeing it for the first time. Guth’s concept lets the story unfold as a blend of memory and hallucination, suffused with loneliness and unexpected poetry. I was swept up by the luxuriance of Domingo Hindoyan’s conducting and the cast’s gleeful commitment to Guth’s vision which, unlike the spaceship on stage, never crashed… and even found surprising levity in the poetic moon-walkers of Act III.
On to the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, where Portuguese choreographer Tânia Carvalho had taken over the permanent-collection galleries for a project titled Tout n’est pas visible, tout n’est pas audible. Dancers inhabited the museum to the accents of twentieth-century music, mostly by Pierre Boulez. The audience, guided from room to room by a roaming clarinettist, encountered solo performers seemingly entranced by neighbouring artworks. The troupe later gathered around a group of cellos and, afterward, a piano-and-violin duo for more elaborate expressions. The sequence before Matisse’s La Danse offered the clearest demonstration of art inspiring art.
Monday 6 October
Paris – Tchaikovsky wrote his 1882 Piano Trio (op. 50) in memory of his close friend, the pianist Nikolai Rubinstein, younger brother of Anton, who had died the previous year at forty-five. Nearly sixty years later, Shostakovich composed his 1944 Piano Trio No. 2 (op. 67) in tribute to Ivan Sollertinsky, the Soviet polymath and tireless champion of Gustav Mahler, who had just died at forty-one. Coloured by the horrors of war, Shostakovich’s trio is about as dark as Tchaikovsky’s is luminous, yet the pairing by pianist Evgeny Kissin, violinist Joshua Bell, and cellist Steven Isserlis at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées beautifully illustrated the creative power of grief. The programme opened with a piece by Riga-born Solomon Rosowsky, a rare visitor to concert programmes.
Wednesday 8 October
Paris – At the Théâtre du Châtelet, Kirill Serebrennikov methodically deconstructed Hamlet and reassembled its fragments into a vertiginous kaleidoscope that mobilised a host of theatrical disciplines and a roster of magnetic performers. The result, Hamlet/Fantômes, set to an atmospheric score by Blaise Ubaldini, combined virtuosity, acuity, and range. The most captivating tableaux featured figures such as Antonin Artaud, Sarah Bernhardt, and Dmitri Shostakovich (a superb Filipp Avdeev, waiting to be arrested, like in Julian Barnes’s The Noise of Time). Rather than offering yet another staging of Hamlet, Serebrennikov delivered a breathtaking demonstration of its timelessness and undiminished relevance: Hamlet is Theatre; Theatre is Life; the rest is silence.
Thursday 9 October
Paris – At the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Igor Levit reaffirmed his standing as one of today’s most compelling pianists. His chronologically tight programme spanned just sixteen years, from 1828 to 1844, with Schubert’s Sonata No. 21 D. 960, Schumann’s Nachtstücke op. 23, and Chopin’s Sonata No. 3 op. 58. As always, Levit seemed intent on sculpting sound with a methodical, almost clinical touch, tracing an invisible waveform in the air. In the vertiginous finale of the Chopin, his technical wizardry conjured the illusion of two pianos playing at once, each with its own texture. His persistent urge to unearth subterranean energies within the music shaped unexpected arcs — unique, visionary, and wholly his own.
Friday 10 October / Saturday 11 October
To Tokyo by plane. Watched Yasujirō Ozu’s 1953 Japanese movie Tokyo Story (Voyage à Tokyo in French). Visually arresting, it reads both as a portrait of post-war Japan and as a meditation on how modernity fractured the traditional family model. Kojun Saitō’s understated score quietly deepens this contemplative, meticulously crafted tale of change and melancholy.
And so, for now, the lights dim… until the next act.