Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Do women have any value? Well, yes — but only if they bear children. This is the message at the heart of Richard Strauss’s gargantuan opera Die Frau ohne Schatten (“The Woman Without a Shadow”), beneath the cladding of mythological figures and a complicated plot. Any opera house tackling the piece today faces multiple challenges. For its new production, Dutch National Opera chose outspoken feminist director Katie Mitchell, who was bound to have plenty to say about librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s deeply problematic texts.Mitchell has a fondness for magic, so it is unsurprising that she sticks with all the opera’s birds and animals, despite an updating to the present. Keikobad, sinister king of the spirit underworld and father of the titular Empress, remains offstage in the script, but Mitchell lets him drift through many of the scenes, wearing an overcoat and an antelope mask. His underworld is populated by suit-wearing gunmen, with and without bird masks, who are enthusiastically murdery; the Empress and her husband, living in a mansion populated by disposable servants, seem unsurprised by their periodic culling.When the barren Empress and her nurse descend to the world of mortals in order to coerce the Dyer’s wife into parting with her own shadow (a metaphor for fertility), the homicidal henchmen are there to help. In Naomi Dawson’s lavish and intricate sets, the Dyer and his brothers have a crystal meth lab in their back room, but business cannot be booming; they subsist on takeaway pizza and beer from the fridge. When Keikobad’s goons kill the brothers at the end, it is unclear whether one cartel is taking over another or whether shooting people is just more fun than letting them walk offstage. There is extensive use of test tubes and an ultrasound baby monitor, to make sure we understand that fertility here is about money and control; almost everything the Dyer’s wife does is at gunpoint, and yet, at the end, she seems strangely delighted to be pregnant.Mitchell describes her staging as a feminist sci-fi thriller; certainly there is plenty going on. Her handiwork is impressive, and the detail is fastidiously wrought and frequently engrossing. Much of it does not add up, or leaves more questions open than answered; but we do get the message of a violent patriarchy leaving women without freedom.In casting, the house seems to have prioritised dramatic talent above vocal ability; all of the women and most of the men seem to struggle with the magnitude of their roles, with only Josef Wagner as Barak the Dyer and AJ Glueckert’s Emperor sounding truly comfortable. Part of this might be because of conductor Marc Albrecht’s decision to raise the pit, placing the orchestra just below the auditorium floor; this is a wonderful way to place the focus on the musicians of the Netherlands Philharmonic and the many fabulous colours that Albrecht draws from them, but it makes it even harder for the singers to be heard without screaming, and most of them sound desperate and worn by the end of the four-hour evening. Their acting, however, cannot be faulted.Albrecht brings magic of his own to the evening; this is one of his party pieces, and there are few who can match his clarity, intelligence, elegance, and shrewd ability to balance brisk transparency with moments of ecstasy. But often there seems to be a fundamental disconnect between pit and stage; we hear superlative playing and see inspired acting, but the actual singing is never really drawn into the mix. Which, in an opera, is a problem. Still, this is an intriguing take on a thorny but opulent opera, and well worth a visit.★★★★☆To May 10, operaballet.nl/en
