Strings Attached: Barry Millington reports on contrasting productions of ‘Lohengrin’ in Berlin and London

It’s no secret that Stefan Herheim uses puppets in his new production of Lohengrin at the Staatsoper, Berlin. Nor is this mere attention-seeking whimsy: as one would expect from the creator of the revelatory new Parsifal at Bayreuth (see review in The Wagner Journal, ii/3, 63–72), the concept has a serious and illuminating purpose. In a nutshell, that purpose may be defined as follows: an exploration of the limits of autonomy and self-determination and of the extent to which ordinary men and women are able to exert control over their lives.