The only opera by Bela Bartok, enchanted by the plot of Charles Perrault, in the production of Romeo Castelucci takes place "completely inside" - inside the castle, inside the main characters. Darkness counteracts the light, fire - the water poured over the entire area of the stage - so inside the characters there are feelings: passion and fear, tenderness and cruelty, perseverance and malleability. Judith longs to open all seven rooms in her lover's castle - in other words, she wants to know everything about him, but the truth of his "I", at the moment of opening which half the letters of the word "ICH" light up on the stage, reflected in the water, plunges her into the abyss. Judith by her curiosity, perseverance, her unhumility, is herself bringing her end nearer. For a long time I tried to remember what kind of heroine she reminds me in her mad aspiration - Antonina Milyukova, Tchaikovsky's wife from the film of the same name by Kirill Serebrennikov - she also went on a smooth road to hell, not wanting to see the truth about her beloved.
But we will see hell only in the last part of Carl Orff’s Mystery at the End of Time. Admittedly, the second time his forgiving reception probably didn't work for me. The production of Anna Guseva, two years ago at the Diaghilev Festival, struck at the very heart - maybe Lucifer, whose image was then given to a little girl who uttered in Russian "Father, I sinned," was closer to me - or just then forgiveness seemed still possible. However, it is impossible to keep silent about the merits: the images of impassive Sibyls climbing out on the day of judgment and the bowels of the skeleton scene and hissing about the mountain will forever remain in memory. Guseva in Orff’s Mystery tells the stories of both Christ and Lucifer in the entourage of a modern family. Castelucci takes a more metaphorical path: His father is a tree, and Jesus is a branch, which is crucified and then completely broken.
On the cover of the stage, which obviously does not let water through, the inscription "Meine haut" is visible throughout the performance. At the end of The Mystery, during the scene with Lucifer, the cover rises - and this inscription (although inverted) becomes visible to the audience. Translated from German it is "my skin", but there is a deliberate play on the words: "mein gott" - "my god". “The end of all things—all sins will be forgotten,” Orff put Origen as an epigraph to his Mystery. Maybe it's the end for God.