The Treasure Hunter in Deutshce Oper in Berlin, the 11th of June, 2022

Deutsche Oper in Berlin may be one of the unglier opera stages, but they do perform interesting operas there and it is easy to reach by public transportation wherever you live in Berlin, since the metro station is next door. This time I went to see Franz Schreker’s opera ”The Treasure Hunter”, which was directed by Christof Loy (my third Loy opera in three months!).

In this opera the jewels of the queen have been robbed and she is literally withering away due to that. The desperate king agrees with the jester that if he finds the jewels, he will be allowed to get married to the woman of his choosing despite his low status in the society. The jester knows about a travelling bard, who - with the help of his golden lute - can see hidden things. Elsewhere the waitress Els, whose father is trying to marry her away, asks his third fiancé (two have died already) to pick up a necklace (the queen’s) from a peddler. At the same time she agrees with a man, who is infatuated with her, that he will kill the fiancé and bring the necklace to her. The jester finds the bard and now Els is afraid that the bard will see her crime. So, again she asks the man who is infatuated with her to steal the golden lute from the bard. Meanwhile Els has, of course, fallen in love with the bard and he with her. Because the bard has found the queen’s necklace, he is suspected to have murdered the fiancé and he is sentenced to death. The jester alerts the king about that and he gives an amnesty to the bard, since he returns the jewellery to the queen (Els has given him all the jewellery that she has received from her dead fiancés without telling him, where she has got them). After that everybody finds out what Els has done, but the jester saves her by claiming her as his bride as a reward for finding the bard and thus the return of the jewels. Els, however, slowly dies in the marriage with the jester.  

The story of the opera is utterly stupid (as it so often is in the operas), but Schreker’s music is fantastic, so this is an opera to see even for the sake of the music. And Deutsche Oper had also got great singers to this opera.  Elisabet Strid as Els was in her usual great shape, but for some reason I liked even more Thomas Johannes Mayer, who sang the role of the bailiff. His voice was great, but above all he was extremely suitable for this role. And by the way, the role of the king was sung by the Finnish bass baritone Tuomas Pursio.

After the performance I simply had to check if Loy had used the same set and costume designers for this opera as for Salone in the Finnish National opera, because this time, too, the costumes were in the three main colours (black, white and red) and the set was extremely simple – almost bare. It turned out that the set designer was the same - Johannes Leiacker, but the costume designer was another - Barbara Drosihn.