An evening of Rossini with the music theatre group Nico and the Navigators

... The plot is at once abstract and concrete. Rossini provides the framework for the associations which develop onstage and play out alongside the contradiction between sacred formalities and the buffonesque gestures which belong to the opera. Stylistic diversity predominates. Frauke Ritter's gaudy costumes underline both the sense of contemporary relevance and the abstractness of the piece. Furious innuendo meets the disrespectful, slapstick meets Freud, opera parody meets no, not blasphemy, which is always closely circumnavigated, but social satire. We are told not only of the relationship between man and a higher being such as God, but also of those relationships existing between the inhabitants of the earth. Especially moving are the almost classic pas-de-deux or the precisely choreographed ensembles that create moments in which music and action almost completely merge into each other. Sometimes deeply moving, sometimes hysterically funny...

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