The terrifying power of good

The most beautiful thing is the rehearsal - the fact that this astonishing theatrical wisdom also applies to director Evgeny Titov may initially come as a surprise. His works are like old master paintings come to life. One could say that they are total works of art that unfold their splendor when opulent costumes, bold stage architecture and breathtaking lighting meet scenic arrangements that inevitably bring to mind the golden ratio in their perfection of form.

The performers are the focus of everyone's attention, and their ecstasy, pain and laughter flood down from the stage into the auditorium. The deep inner turmoil of Wagner's Tannhäuser, which Titov recently staged at Graz Opera, is literally palpable when the protagonist sings his way back to life from the depths of a crater he has dug himself and simultaneously from the arms of Venus - who is a cool goddess of art in the director's interpretation. It is moments like these, when the vertical suddenly opens up to dizzying heights, that make Titov's productions so fascinating and surprising.

Evgeny Titov has dedicated his life to a stage art that allows the audience to completely leave everyday life behind for a while. A theater of illusion that does not depict life, but exaggerates it. And that is why it is such a privilege to watch him rehearse.

He drives the singers with an energy that is rarely less than 120 percent. Conversations about the intertwined paths of the characters, about their motivation and attitude, alternate with great raging, anger, suffering and love when Titov throws himself into the dust in front of his ensemble. You can often observe this wonderful moment of understanding when actors working with the director for the first time realize that it is not about copying him, but about opening up to the existential pain, the absolute rapture of a character.

Words and singing are an important means of expression, but not the only one, and so Titov uses his own acting as a method to make the emotions understandable that can flow through a body like a strong current and shape it. And he also wants to demonstrate what heights these emotions can reach. The "real work" begins when the actor or actress opens up to this process and a role is developed together.

No detail, no matter how small, is indifferent to Titov; he is interested in the color of stockings, the gesture of a hand, the clasp of a cigarette case and the angle at which light hits a face, or how much patina should be applied to a wall. In a thousand small details and incidents during rehearsals, you can tell that the director himself has been on stage for a long time.

Born in Kazakhstan and trained at the theater academy in St. Petersburg, Titov worked as an actor for years before studying directing at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna. Why did he emigrate in his late twenties without knowing the German language? "I decided to take the most extreme step imaginable," he says. "I had a good career in my home country and many offers, including in film. But I wanted to develop myself further and study directing in Europe. I also wanted to get out of Russia." Titov has not worked as an actor since switching to directing, which is why he doesn't mind when critics occasionally pigeonhole him as a "stage actor".

Evgeny Titov is extremely interested in the psychology of the characters; he is a storyteller, albeit not in the traditional sense. His works are more like multidimensional dreams in which the personal experiences and traumas of a stage character mingle with the contents of a collective unconscious: In his production of Shakespeare's Macbeth at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, for example, the director focused entirely on unraveling the evil that Macbeth and the Lady unleash - the evil that they can no longer master, that gains power over them and ultimately plunges their world into darkness.

The famous three witches act as projections from the depths of Macbeth's and the Lady's psyche. Living likenesses that follow the passions of the murderous couple and yet develop an uncanny life of their own. Just as in a dream, Titov's unreal images flow into one another, then hard cuts throw the audience abruptly from one situation into the next. The stringency of a seamless narrative is important to him, but the existential conflict of the characters carries more weight: "A few years ago, I asked myself what a director actually is, and I found an answer for myself: The director is the one who sees the essentials - not everything, but only the essentials."

Evgeny Titov has developed his very own artistic signature. When you listen to him and feel the passion with which he narrates and his enthusiasm for the works of great composers and writers, it is easy to see how he can first captivate an ensemble and then, as a result, an audience. Titov has long been in demand not only in spoken theater, where his first works were created, but is now considered a new star in the opera world - even if he himself does not like to hear such clichés. This development took place at breathtaking speed.

Within just three years, he made his debut at the Komische Oper Berlin with George Enescu's Oedipe, staged the Swiss premiere of George Benjamin's Lessons in Love and Violence and Claudio Monteverdi's L'Orfeo at the Zurich Opera House, Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro took him to the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and, most recently, his production of Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges celebrated an acclaimed premiere at the Semperoper Dresden. "Opera has been my lifelong dream," says Titov, whose next works will take him to the Salzburg Festival, the Opéra Comique in Paris and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London.

Anyone who knows Evgeny Titov even a little will understand that his "lifelong dream of opera" is not aimed at an impressive number of renowned houses, not at the glamor that prominent singers, conductors and orchestras can bring to a production, and certainly not at his own market value. Titov is only interested in working with the best artistic colleagues, preferably those who are as passionate about their work as he is. The director wastes and burns himself out on his productions to such an extent that it is sometimes frightening. You could call this an obsession with art: He is concerned with the work of art in the making, nothing else.

Titov is now making his debut at the Vienna State Opera with Iolanta. Tchaikovsky's fairytale opera about a blind princess who is supposed to learn to see seems like a surreal dream itself: a princess is shielded from the outside world to such an extent that no one tells her what others use their eyes for. Iolanta's father has built an immense web of lies around her, yet the princess suspects that she is missing something crucial. Do we really need the light to understand the truth or, as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry would later put it, can we "only see well with the heart"? The Danish poet Henrik Hertz, who wrote the original, creates a world in which love reigns, light shines for all and lies have had their day. A parable about the terrifying power of good, a paradox made for the existentialist Evgeny Titov.

As a student, he queued up at the Vienna State Opera to get a ticket at the box office. Today, Evgeny Titov is at home everywhere and nowhere. He quickly changes cities. It is an exhausting life, often without a place to retreat and time for himself, which the director sometimes regrets. What helps him in his nomadic existence is a confidence gained from experience: "I feel that there are energies behind me that guide me. Something is guiding me, I know that. Someone is looking after me so that I can cope with it all. A production is ultimately a trace in the sand that we leave behind when we walk along the waterline. The waves pass over it, soon it's gone, and something new only comes when you move forward."