The Tsar’s Bride

The Berlin history of "The Tsar's Bride" began in 1922 when the opera gained popularity due to the first wave of Russian emigration. In 1948, it was staged here as a sign of strengthening Soviet-German friendship. Dmitry Chernyakov's production has nothing to do with interstate politics or ideological trends. 

The performance, which triumphantly opened the 2013/2014 season at the Staatsoper (which was still undergoing renovations to its main building on Unter den Linden and was temporarily housed in the Theater named after Schiller), was born out of the director's desire to reintroduce to Europeans a Russian masterpiece unjustly forgotten. According to Chernyakov himself, it is "a very comprehensible work with a tight, logical dramaturgy, vividly portrayed characters, based on a well-crafted play, a melodrama." By transposing the 1899 opera (set in the autumn of 1572) into an ominously ironic futuristic setting, Chernyakov continues the development of his favorite theme: the collision of a counterfeit artificial world and scorchingly genuine emotions.