Oedipe at Komische Oper, Berlin
The British baritone Leigh Melrose’s searing performance is as much a dramatic feat as it is a musical achievement. Of all the Oedipuses haunting the German capital, his is the most affecting, tragic and believable.
Leigh Melrose, in the fraught title role,
gives a remarkable performance, gripping and powerful, consummately emotional
yet always in control.
Melrose is an artist totally committed and embodied in his roles, who says the texts with a mad urgency, with an overwhelming internal burn, displaying both an intrinsic fragility and a false assurance that turns into violence. Blind, endowed with a perfect French diction, burning each word, chiseling each breath, taking care of each color as well in the expressionism as in the meditative… he is one of those rare artists who tell the whole truth of a role on stage and who upset an audience. This is the case here, in a striking Oedipus, not only in the violent scenes, but in the desperate lyricism of the last part; simply and authentically fabulous, which brought the room to its knees.