Munich opera premiere: "The English Cat" on the hot tin roof

A cumbersome piece, a lackluster production – and very subdued applause: The Bavarian State Opera has certainly had more spectacular starts to a new season than this year. The audience's enthusiasm for the new production of Hans Werner Henze's "The English Cat " was rather muted.

Director Christiane Lutz, together with the young talent from the Munich Opera Studio, stages the fable about cult-like organized cats who have joined together to form the vegetarian "Society for the Protection of Rats," and shows it as it was probably intended: as a satire and parable about all-too-human hypocrisy and brutality.

The characters therefore don't wear cat masks, but costumes that could have come from the 1960s/70s. Thus, the story of young Minette (who, along with conductor Katharina Wincor, received the most applause: Seonwoo Lee), who is married to Lord Puff (Michael Butler), the president of the only superficially idealistic society, falls in love with the impetuous cat Tom (Armand Rabot), and pays for her escape from society with her life and that of her lover.

Henze's opera , who would have turned 100 next year, is being performed against the backdrop of a London townhouse or on its roof. Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" comes to mind.

“This piece is like a friend you have to fight for, but in the end you're inseparable,” director Lutz, wife of star tenor Jonas Kaufmann, told the Süddeutsche Zeitung about the rather unwieldy piece. This sense of connection, however, didn't seem to materialize with the audience. Some even took their hats and coats and left during the intermission.

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