Many canonic composers might shake their heads in disbelief if confronted with a recent production of one of their operas. Not so Richard Wagner in Kasper Holten's 2016 staging of Das Liebesverbot at the Teatro Real, Madrid (co-produced with London's Royal Opera House and the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, and rendered for the screen by János Darvas). Before the castanets ring in the boisterous overture, the middle-aged composer's imposing head appears on the stage curtain.Footnote ¹ And no sooner has the orchestra delivered the rambunctious primary theme than the projected Wagner starts blinking and smiling in apparent recognition of his music. He then rocks his head and mouths the theme's continuation, knowingly directing caesuras with his eyebrows; and he dreamily stares into the distance during the lyrical cantilena later associated in the opera with amorous desire. Not even cuts to his score discomfit this Wagner animation's increasingly exuberant trip down memory lane.

Holten's opening gambit serves a dual purpose. On the one hand, it emphasizes Wagner's authorship of this rarely performed opera, his second completed attempt in the genre and the first one he ever saw staged – if only for one poorly rehearsed performance under his baton at the Magdeburg theatre in 1836. Indeed, although the mature composer distanced himself from Das Liebesverbot (which he called his ‘youthful sin’),Footnote ² his likeness's facial expressions draw attention to the distinct emotive worlds inhabited by the overture's three main themes, which will appear throughout the opera as proto-leitmotifs and thus point towards his future music dramas. On the other hand, the grinning projection signals a different, more light-hearted Wagner than the one commonly known from his ten Bayreuth-approved works. The gimmick prepares spectators for the madcap comedy which Wagner distilled from Shakespeare's Measure for Measure and transported into a clichéd Palermo replete with philandering Latin lovers; and it invites audiences to follow the composer open-mindedly into his past and the tour of mid-1830s European opera he provides. After all, as if to underline the plot's concluding celebration of carnival – which, along with carnal love and all manner of joie de vivre, had been banned at the opera's outset by Palermo's interim German governor Friedrich – Das Liebesverbot resembles a musical kaleidoscope, with its diverse stylistic influences neatly fitted to appropriate contexts or characters. We encounter efforts at opera buffa patter in German, a Rossinian contemplative ‘freeze’ ensemble in the act 1 finale, Bellinian cantilena, Donizettian coloratura, mass scenes à la Auber, ominous descending brass triads recalling Meyerbeer's Robert le diable for the forbidding world of Friedrich, dramaturgical borrowings from Mozart (the last Figaro finale) and Beethoven (the prison world of Fidelio), and, amidst all this, the occasional anticipation of Wagner's more mature manner.Footnote ³ The latter shines through above all in some lyrical passages and refined timbral touches, such as the delicate introduction in violins, flutes, and oboes to the convent scene, complete with a citation of the ‘Dresden Amen’ that would more famously grace both Tannhäuser and Parsifal. The resulting score is patchy, to be sure. But presenting it like an exploratory masquerade of the young Wagner rehearsing various compositional identities sets adequate expectations for an enjoyable – as well as historically revealing – experience. Accordingly, Holten's staging amplifies the comedic aspects of the plot, which he updates to a shrill twenty-first-century world of flashy entertainment and ubiquitous social media. Conductor Ivor Bolton's fast tempi, clearly sculpted musical contrasts, and generally breezy approach support the production's upbeat effort.

That said, Holten and Bolton did give the score a facelift. Their countless smaller and medium-sized cuts ameliorate its repetitive lengthiness and move Das Liebesverbot's number-opera format slightly closer toward music-dramatic continuity – a practice for Wagner's earlier works dating back at least to Cosima Wagner's Rienzi edition of the late 1880s.Footnote ⁴ Most consequential is the omission of the few spoken dialogues and secco recitatives, as well as occasional stretches of accompanied recitative. While suppressing resonances of German comic opera and Singspiel, these cuts render some plot twists harder to follow. Holten here banks on visual information. Instead of reading the titular ban on love out loud, his police chief Brighella tweets it while literally pulling the plug on the opening scene's neon-saturated red-light district, leaving onstage characters to gawk at their smartphones and offstage audiences to scan the sides of the stage, where a projection of the tweet replaces previous advertisements. At other times, Holten substitutes text with pantomime alone. During the orchestral postlude to the act 2 trio (no. 9), for instance, the protagonist-novice Isabella – as part of her plot-defining mission to save her brother Claudio from execution for having had sex – is seen bribing the shady bartender Pontio Pilato and giving him the thumbs-up. Exactly what they negotiate, however, remains as opaque as the question of why both Pontio and the waitress Dorella have been released from prison. In his streamlining zeal, Holten not only embraces the libretto's occasional dramatic non sequiturs but adds some of his own. How, one wonders, can Claudio use a mobile phone in prison?Footnote ⁵

Musically, the only number left intact is Friedrich's grand scene and aria in act 2 (no. 10), perhaps the most gripping and forward-pointing moment of the opera in which the tormented puritanical governor grapples with his awakening desires for Isabella. In other solo or ensemble numbers, a good portion of the excruciatingly difficult coloratura passages are shortened or eliminated, as are repetitions of cabalette. The demanding chorus part lost many of its complacently lengthy reflections, and stretches of the – still sizeable – overture as well as the opera's concluding march are also gone. For the most part, these cuts are barely noticeable (the score still feels luxuriously expansive). What's more, they are occasionally bridged by the sound of Brighella's whistle moving the action along.

Steffen Aarfing's stage-high unit set further helps speed up transitions between scenes. A monolithic nested structure with a steep central staircase, it is swiftly transformed through lighting and ambient projections (by Bruno Poet and Luke Halls, respectively) from the opening nightlife scene into Isabella's monastery and so on, its irregular alcoves of vaguely Mediterranean style serving in turn as brothel rooms, convent or prison cells, courtroom galleries, or urban piazzas. Additionally, a few practicable set pieces appear as needed on a conveyor belt or from the flies to provide the protagonists with more intimate, delightfully outfitted spaces. Along with Aarfing's colourfully exaggerated folksy costumes, these settings are brought to life by Holten's attentive Personenregie, inspired acting, and casual slapstick scenes. That the protagonists’ demeanour sometimes borders on caricature seems to fit the overall concept. Thus, we find Friedrich's deserted-wife-turned-nun Mariana desolately binge-eating in the convent, where Isabella couples her pleas for Mariana's trust with (futile) attempts at weaning her off her bag of chips. Dorella appears as a dominatrix who quickly has Brighella begging for her favours on all fours, while the imprisoned Claudio's gestures – in his duet with Isabella starting act 2 (no. 7), here conducted via mobile phones – betray that he never intended to save her honour in the first place. And when the clownish Luzio loses the bouquet meant to charm Isabella to his former conquest Dorella, he playfully wrests an umbrella from a passer-by to at least shield his latest love interest from picturesque rain. The prize for characterization goes to the uptight Friedrich, acted and sung magnificently by Christopher Maltman. In act 1, after awkwardly lifting his justice's gown to turn Isabella on with his underwear, he seeks to restore order by obsessively cleaning his glasses. And the grand second-act monologue has him mull over his sudden infatuation while getting ready for (his twin) bed, his emotional dilemma symbolized first by his reverence to the stern portrait of what appears to be his grandmother and then by his self-soothing – and inadvertent masturbating – with a teddy bear. His asceticism, reflected in his petty bourgeois chamber of Bavarian flair, has clearly become too rigid even for Friedrich himself.

While Wagner's portrait never returns after the overture to weigh in on the production, the concluding carnival scene sports such Wagnerian signifiers as horns, winged helmets, and breastplates. Brighella goes all out as a blond Valkyrie (another sign, perhaps, that Dorella wears the breeches in their budding relationship), while Friedrich rushes to his tryst with a grotesque bronze swan for a helmet. Wagner, of course, frequently identified himself with his later operatic heroes. But does Holten's association between the composer or his messianic Lohengrin character and the German governor suggest that Wagner freed himself in this opera from his self-decreed Germanic puritanism to acknowledge his marriage with the allegedly lascivious Italian (and French) opera? If so, then Friedrich – cum Wagner – would soon renounce his Southern spouse once more while keeping her dowry.

In general, Holten's lampooning of German austerity seems unresolved. For in the end, it is not a Sicilian king but the German chancellor Angela Merkel who lands – by projected plane – to end Friedrich's reign. Although she evidently tries to retain her composure (complete with the ‘Merkel Raute’, her signature hand posture here didactically emphasized by a close-up), her pink jacket fits right into the scene;Footnote ⁶ and when a bystander takes a selfie with her, she boldly sticks out her tongue. Her staff meanwhile scatter stacks of Euro bills among the ecstatic crowd, whose final acclamations thus hail less jouissance than German economic support. The reunited Friedrich and Mariana in turn rejoice over Lufthansa tickets – back to Germany, one may assume. Is Holten's Friedrich a stab, then, at Merkel's party's more conservative Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU)? Or does the production's final gag simply highlight ambivalent feelings about German dominance in Europe – doubts that would contribute, a few months after the production's opening, to the Brexit vote?

Not everything, then, adds up in this fastmoving staging. And Janos Darvas's video direction does little to help. After the conventional establishing shots of auditorium, orchestra, and stage, Darvas seems largely uncertain whether to follow the music or the staging. As a result, he crosscuts all too frequently between closeups of singers and of added stage business, sometimes inexplicably swivelling away from singers at musical climaxes or dipping into the orchestra right when the stage action – or Wagner's portrait – gains momentum. Deprived of sufficient wide-angle shots, however, the screen audience misses important cues for the production. In the theatre, for instance, the large clock hovering over the stage and deliberately speeding up the represented time for most of act 2 must have added to the act's mounting tension; on screen, it appears in passing as a random accoutrement. (Occasionally, though, the close-ups reveal amusing details that might have been lost on live spectators: Friedrich's teddy bear, the camera shows, wears Lederhosen.)

Another drawback of the DVD is the cast's unequal vocal quality. In addition to the outstanding Maltman, Manuela Uhl commands the action as a perky Isabella, excelling particularly in the more dramatic passages. Peter Lodahl (Luzio), María Hinojosa (Dorella) and Ante Jerkunica (Brighella) offer apt role portraits, while María Miró (a sulky Mariana), Ilker Arcayürek (Claudio) and Francisco Vas (Pontio Pilato, with tattoos and Falstaff belly) sometimes struggle audibly with their more limited vocal means. The fault, though, lies partly with Wagner for demanding that singers sport both dramatic and lighter bel canto voices – a Fach-defying side-effect of this opera's stylistic carnival. In the end, Das Liebesverbot remains a youthful, if energetic, trial. But as delivered by Holten, Bolton, and the orchestra and chorus of the Teatro Real, it makes for a worthwhile entertainment that even Friedrich might have allowed.