Die Entführung aus dem Serail – review

Queen Elizabeth Hall, LondonMozart's beautiful, troubling comedy about the clash of values between Enlightenment Europe and Ottoman Turkey doesn't lend itself easily to concert performance. Its mix of speech and song is tricky to bring off even on stage. Jettisoning the dialogue and replacing it with narration, however, is also risky, since it means we lose the all-important presence of Pasha Selim, who speaks but never sings, and on whose refusal to emulate the prejudices of Christian Europe ...

Read full article Share article