He put Carmen in a gorilla suit and had Das Rheingold’s Erda represented by an 82-year-old naked woman. What are the the director’s plans for his edge-of-the-seat Die Walküre?
From the Muppet Show to Kafka, Yiddish theatre to Vivaldi, pop music to Wagner – Barrie Kosky’s enthusiasms ricochet at a speed that leaves you dizzy as well as, in their rampant variety, a touch envious. This 58-year-old Australian theatre and opera director sees all art, all life, as one. His love of clowns, cabaret and musicals is as intense as his passion for theatre and grand opera. “Whether it touches the soul is all that matters,” he says, his loquacious personality expanding into a small side office at the Royal Opera House in London before a rehearsal. His new staging of Die Walküre, the second opera in Wagner’s Ring cycle, openson 1 May .
Kosky was born in Melbourne but has been based in Berlin for the past 20 years, where he was artistic director of the Komische Oper and still has an association there. He is funny, clever, outrageous but above all serious. His productions may shock, though that is never his intention. Dressing his Carmen up in a gorilla suit for a production that now has cult status in Frankfurt and Copenhagen – but did not catch light with audiences in London – was part of a studied aesthetic: the heroine living her brief life through a set of extreme roles. In his Das Rheingold, the first part of the Ring which opened in 2023, he caused upset in some quarters by having Erda – mother Earth – represented by a naked 82-year-old woman.
