The Art of Change: Patrick Carnegy considers a visionary director’s approach to opera production

If you were looking for a defence of Regietheater or ‘director’s theatre’ this could be a good place to start. Yuval Sharon’s primary qualification as a Wagnerian is his 2018 Lohengrin at Bayreuth, where he was the first American to direct. But the accreditation runs deeper in that he’s a fervent advocate of the Gesamtkunstwerk – albeit in a personal interpretation thereof – and, more importantly, of Wagner’s assertion that there would be more ways of interpreting and performing his works than he himself had envisaged.