The disruption of order: Achim Freyer's scenography for opera

Abstract

This article presents a close analysis of the operatic productions of the German scenographer Achim Freyer. Although a crucially important designer--director in opera and a key visual artist in theatre, Freyer’s oeuvre has received comparatively little treatment in Anglophone scholarship. I argue that his work forms part of a broad new paradigm in operatic scenography, which departs from previously dominant modes. This change is a complex one, bound up sociologically and politically with the globalization of opera; its aesthetics include new and reimagined modes of stylization, abstraction and theatricality. While Freyer’s work fits within this model, it must also be analyzed on its own terms, to appreciate the radicalism and creativity of his approach. In examining Freyer’s repertoire of scenographic gestures, I trace the development of a number of key stylistic tropes, including his abiding love of the grotesque, strategies of theatricality and meta-theatricality, modes of abstraction, treatment of the proscenium frame, and use of cubic sets and geometric perspective. In mapping his scenography, I analyze a key set of productions, which exemplify his aesthetic and serve as turning points in his development as a designer-director: Weber’s Der Freischütz (1980), Wilson/Glass’s Einstein on the Beach (1988) and Sciarrino’s Macbeth (2002).