WRITTEN ON SKIN • OPER FRANKFURT
★★★★☆☆
Photo: Barbara Aumüller
REVIEW: WRITTEN ON SKIN IN FRANKFURT: FOR SOME, A REVELATION; FOR OTHERS, A CHALLENGE; FOR EVERYONE, AN EXPERIENCE
George Benjamin’s Written on Skin has been called a masterpiece of modern opera, and it’s not hard to see why. It is musical drama with sharp edges, psychological coldness, and an uncompromising nature that both fascinates and frustrates.
Written on Skin demands a lot from its audience—perhaps more than most are used to. In 2025, the piece could be experienced at the Copenhagen Opera in Katie Mitchell’s acclaimed production, and it was an experience that lingered long after the final note.
Frankfurt’s current production is staged by German-born director Tatjana Gürbaca (53) in a surrealistic universe that, despite original touches, doesn’t quite reach the same level.
Photo: Barbara Aumüller
The plot is based on a medieval tale of jealousy, desire, and brutality: A powerful man, The Protector, hires a young illustrator to create a book about his life.
Photo: Barbara Aumüller
The artist ends up having sex with the man’s tyrannized wife, Agnès, and tragedy is inevitable. In an iconic final scene, the woman is forced to eat the murdered artist’s heart. A cruel story that Benjamin and librettist Martin Crimp tell through a modern dramaturgical filter, where angels comment on the action, and layers of time slide in and out of one another. It is refined and quite difficult to access.
Musically, Benjamin is uncompromising. The orchestra works in dense, dissonant soundscapes. Ravishingly beautiful in its own icy way, but also demanding. For some, it will feel like a wall of sound that keeps one at a distance. For others, it is precisely this resistance that makes the work so compelling.
In the midst of this icy universe stands Bo Skovhus as The Protector—and he is outstanding. He does not play the character as a straightforward villain, but as a man trapped by his own power, his own fear, and his own self-understanding. His vocal authority and dark intensity give the role a human dimension that elevates the entire performance.
The staging is visually striking: a space between the Middle Ages and the present, between myth and reality. But it is also conceptual to a degree that can seem distancing. Written on Skin is not an opera that invites the audience in; it demands that you find your own way.
If you’re a bit critical, the staging feels more like a concept than communication. Triangular landscapes, symbolic ruins, a crashing passenger plane, globes rising in the background.
Photo: Barbara Aumüller
The images are charged, yet so open that they can practically mean anything. Much is metaphor; little is clear. It becomes a performance that one does not so much experience as witness—with arms crossed.
From this perspective, Written on Skin appears as an opera that speaks primarily to those who have already learned the language. And if one does not “understand it,” it is one’s own fault. Critics would call it elitist snobbery wrapped in musical packaging.
Photo: Barbara Aumüller
Four stars from GOT TO SEE THIS for an artistically bold and musically strong production of a work that doesn’t give in without a fight. For some, it will be a revelation. For others, a challenge. For everyone, an experience.
