Intermezzo

Berlin baby burners

This is what it looks like backstage in Berlin, where Anna Netrebko and Placido Domingo are rehearsing Il trovatore. Role debuts for the pair of them.

Philipp Stölzl's (long sold out) new production opens on 29 November - more photos below.

Brunch in Berlin with Barenboim - free tickets

Fancy seeing Daniel Barenboim and Anna Prohaska together in Berlin?

They're giving a recital in the Schiller Theatre at 11am on Sunday 20 October. A kind reader has donated two excellent tickets, just inches away from the stage.

If you'd like to get your mitts on them, please email me at inter-mezzo. hotmail.co.uk - first come, first served.

Before you head for the email, please bear in mind that the recital is in Berlin, and you will need to make your own way there. The tickets can be handed over either in London or Berlin, as you prefer.

*UPDATE* - now gone!

The naked Kammersänger

Jonas Kaufmann isn't the only singer to get gonged.  It's awards time in Berlin too, where Komische Oper veteran Jens Larsen has been awarded the title Berliner Kammersänger.

The bass departed Sunday night's Poppea naked, in a pool of blood. Well, he is playing Seneca.  He popped on some trousers before returning to the stage to accept his award from Intendant Barrie Kosky.

Larsen is used to relieving the strain on the costume budget. He made his mark as Osmin in Calixto Bieito's 2004 Entführung aus dem Serail, where he became possibly the first ever opera singer to sing naked - in the shower.  Larsen wasn't bothered. "After all," he said "who takes a shower in swimming trunks?"

Berlin Philharmonic drop the ball

The Konzerthaus Berlin have denied the Berliner Philharmoniker a record-breaking third victory in a row in the annual Berlin musicians' football tournament.  

Crushed beneath their boots on the path to glory were the Deutsche Oper, Komische Oper, Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin and Staatskapelle, and the teenagers of the Bach-Gymnasium music school.

Clarinettist Professor Ralf Forster clinched the final with a powerful penalty that left the Philharmonic's timpanist goalie with no chance.

Pick your own - Berliner version

Hot on the heels of the Met's new opera picker comes the Komische Oper's Oper-O-mat.

Let them know your companions and your expertise, share your preferences regarding nudity, corpse count and lavishness of costumery, and they'll tell you (via highlighted boxes in the lower right hand corner) which of their productions will suit you best.

Pick a suspect combination (anything involving minor children and unhappy endings), and like the good honest Germans they are, they'll suggest you stay at home.

Berlin waves a (NSFW) flag for Verdi

Hot on the heels of Dustin Hoffmann's gran-com Quartet comes another work inspired by the Casa di Riposo per Musicisti in Milan, the real-life opera singers' retirement home funded by Giuseppe Verdi and brought to international notice in the documentary film Il bacio di Tosca.

As in Quartet, the story centres around a gala organised to raise funds for the home.

But it's unlikely Dame Maggie Smith would sign up to perform in Villa Verdi, which opens at Berlin's Volksbühne tonight . In place of Hoffmann's gentle prostate jokes, 73 year old director Johann Kresnik has spiced up the geriatric goings-on with racy flashbacks and acres of bare flesh. Pictures below.

***WARNING***BOTTY ALERT****