A Classroom Lesson in German History: Barry Millington is enthralled by Peter Konwitschny’s ‘Lohengrin’ in Copenhagen

Copenhagen is rightly proud of its new opera house, a ferry-hop across the water from the popular Nytorv. Yet even a new house endowed with the latest equipment is not immune from technological catastrophe. The unthinkable happened on Sunday 4 February when the curtain failed to rise at the start of the performance and indeed refused to budge for over an hour, forcing the management to draw on the audience’s goodwill, and on its own hospitality and orchestral overtime budgets.

Had it been necessary to resort to a concert performance that day, the audience would have been denied one of the great productions of recent years: that of Lohengrin by Peter Konwitschny, a Hamburg–Barcelona co-production first seen in 1998, finally reaching Copenhagen for a run of ten performances this year.