Zoroastre at Komische Oper Berlin

Jean-Philippe Rameau, enfant terrible and innovator of French Baroque music, created a harmonious, shockingly fresh and colourful rarity with his tragédie lyrique Zoroastre, which – following on from Barrie Kosky's award-winning production of Castor et Pollux, can be seen for the first time in Berlin this season. At the lectern, the British Rameau specialist Christian Curnyn once again ensures that audiences can enjoy an authentic soundscape. The successful young director Tobias Kratzer, who will produce Tannhäuserin Bayreuth in 2019, will be presenting himself to a Berlin audience for the first time.

The king is dead and all order has fled. In the realm of Bactria – what is today the north of Afghanistan – Abramane has seized power. He desires the rightful heir to the throne, Amélite. Yet she loves Zoroastre, as does her rival Erinice, who also claims a right to the throne. The blasphemers Abramane and Erinice thus together conspire against the righteous Zoroastre and Amélite in a battle of all the might of Heaven and Earth against the forces of Hell.
Whether seen as a pioneer of the Enlightenment or a magical shaman – Zoroastre, better known in this country as Zarathustra, has always been veiled in mystery. Long before Friedrich Nietzsche, this ancient Iranian religious founder fascinated the poets and thinkers of the French Enlightenment. The eternal battle of good against evil is at the centre of the libretto by Louis Cahusac, a self-confessed Freemason. It is no coincidence that in the priest Zoroastre one can recognise the template for the equally good and violent Sarastro from The Magic Flute. The mythical content of the opera reflects the ever-topical ideal of the enlightened person who, as a being gifted with reason, can and must freely decide between good and evil time and again.