Calixto Bieito is responsible for some of the most indelible images in recent memory on the European opera stage. I’ll never forget his version of “Die Entführung aus dem Serail” at the Komische Oper Berlin. Mozart’s music and the contemporary brothel setting rubbed off unsettlingly on one another—the composition acquired a layer of mysterious grime, while the setting gained a hard-to-place nobility, and the omnipresent, flaccid penis of the singer playing Osmin swung between a blunt statement of fact and a titillation. Bieito is currently preparing for his new production of Verdi’s “I Vespri Siciliani” at the Zurich Opera, premiering June 9. I spoke with him via Zoom about fluidity in rehearsal, ignoring the audience, and the difference between art and culture.
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