Juana
Enric Palomar & Rebecca Simpson

Set & Light design........Matthias Hönig
Costume design........Carlos Wagner
Conductor........Harald Knauff
première: Opera Halle 25June 2005

Teatre Romea Barcelona 18 November 2005
company: Oper Halle/ Liceu

Reviews

Madness with method: World premiere in Halle
Carlos Wagner guides his cast with precision and gives space to the music --- Palomars composition, his sincerity, an excellent cast around the expressive Ursula Hesse von den Steinen, and a fitting production justify the applause of the audience on the first night. Halle's commitment to contribute to the creation of new work, was nobly achieved  in this season.

Leipziger Volkszeitung

Juana
It is a very successful creation that was given life by a simple but effective staging. Few scenic elements, above all the bars that symbolize the lack of freedom of the main character, and very well designed costumes that allude to period without being cumbersome or heavy-handed. One has to congratulate the fact that in the twenty-first century a new chamber opera has appeared that can be shown everywhere.

La Vanguardia

"Juana"
Carlos Wagner provides suspense for the 90 minutes of this opera sung in Spanish. The set consists of two Cubes of different height set in a pool of water. Ingenious lighting effects produce bizarre reflections that give the set a mystical aura---

Musikjournal

Destiny of a woman
---Director CarlosWagner leads a cast in historical costumes through Matthias Hönig's agreeably abstract set. The imprisonment of the queen on a concrete block surrounded by water associates the dark jail as meaningfully as the colour-drenched actions behind the screen in the background, making the isolation of the queen palpable. The local audience was pleased, and the visitors from Barcelona rapturous.

Metropol

Solitude of a queen
The staging by Carlos Wagner was as simple as effective in his diaphanous separation of the spaces through water. This river Duero that carries away the tragic destinies of the protagonists, from the confines of the prison-cage of the queen and the home of Padilla and Maria Pacheco. There is no doubt that Juana is a compact spectacle, with a coherence between objectives and results not always easy to find these days.

Avui