Radical clarity

With her new production of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette opening at Semperoper Dresden on 3 May, Barbara Wysocka reflects on Shakespeare’s endless capacity to reveal and provoke, and how she translates his work to opera

What are your first memories of experiencing Shakespeare? How did it affect you? How did that change as you grew up?

I have no clear first encounter – Shakespeare was always present. His texts were there before I understood them, before I had any tools to work with them. Over time, they ceased to be literature or legacy. They became instruments – structures with which one can think, struggle, project. I don’t approach these texts with admiration. I work with them, sometimes against them, to expose what they continue to carry, and what they no longer can.

What draws you to directing his plays and operas?

The structural intelligence. The way contradictions live inside characters, inside single lines. The scope of thought. These works are not closed – they expand. They allow for radical clarity, and they reward precision. What draws me in is not their age, but their capacity to respond – if you create a space in which they’re allowed to speak.

What scares you about directing his plays and operas?

Nothing. What concerns me is the context in which we’re asked to work – the administrative weight, the institutional inertia. The danger is not in the directing. The danger is giving the best of yourself to impossible structures, instead of to your own thinking, your family, or the interior life that art depends on.

How do you approach directing a new production – what are your very first steps?

It depends on the form. In theatre, I begin with the text – reading slowly, asking questions, looking for tension between what the play says and what it avoids. I’m not searching for a concept. I’m trying to understand where the play connects with the present.

In opera, I begin with the music. I listen carefully and try to follow what it suggests – it brings images, rhythms, directions. When the score is coherent and emotionally clear, it starts to shape the world on stage. I don’t build over the music – I let it lead, even if it’s not always easy. Good music carries its own logic, and my work is to make that visible.

How important is it to find relevance to today’s audiences in directing his works? How far can you go with his original in order to do this?

Relevance is not a strategy, it’s a necessity. If the text has no urgency in the present, it should be left alone. But making it relevant doesn’t mean updating costumes or adding references – it means creating a space where the play’s internal tensions can collide with contemporary realities. You can go very far with the original – as long as you stay honest.

Why did you direct Julius Caesar in 2016 – what attracted you to that play?

Its politics. The brutality of its characters. The collapse of belief under pressure. Julius Caesar is not a metaphor – it’s a diagram of how systems break. What interested me was the psychology of power: how it moves through people, how it corrupts, how it hides behind language.

When you played Mark Antony, how did you feel being inside a role written for a man?

I felt strong. I felt purposeful. Roles written for men often carry action – momentum, strategy, consequence. To inhabit that space is not about gender, it’s about function. You move the narrative. You bend the world around you. That experience is not just rare – it’s transformative.

What are the challenges of working with translations of Shakespeare into Polish?

Polish translations tend to elevate the language, often at the expense of rhythm and risk. The violence of thought, the abruptness of emotion, the dark humor – these elements are frequently smoothed over. I usually rework the text in rehearsal. Not to simplify, but to reactivate it.

What has been your experience of acting in A Midsummer Night’s Dream?

Painful. Not every process leads to discovery. Sometimes a production becomes a site of resistance – artistic, personal, emotional. A Midsummer Night’s Dream was that for me. I do not have distance from it, nor resolution.

Do you personally prefer watching Shakespeare in translation or in English?

In English.

How well can opera carry the original theatrical power of Shakespeare’s words? What are the challenges of directing operas of his plays, compared with his plays?

Opera transforms. It transposes psychological intention into musical form. Something is inevitably lost – nuance, agility, certain registers of irony – but something else emerges: the body of emotion, the irreversibility of feeling. The challenge is to retain clarity of intention when the language is absorbed by sound. You don’t direct what is being sung – you direct why it must be sung.

What surprises or revelations have you had while directing Roméo and Juliettte?

How violently contemporary it is. The escalation, the surveillance, the pressure to choose a side. The impossibility of privacy. This is not a love story – it’s a study of collapse. And yet the characters search for love with an urgency that feels almost sacred. Not romantic love – but the need to be recognised, to be understood, to be held outside the violence.

How have your ideas about Shakespeare changed since you directed Julius Caesar in 2016?

I trust Shakespeare less. And I trust the present more. I approach the plays as opportunities – to ask difficult questions, to expose failure, to listen differently.

How well do you feel Shakespeare wrote female characters? What do you feel you’ve learnt both about directing and acting these characters?

His female characters are often the clearest thinkers. They observe with precision, speak with consequence, act decisively. They are written with intelligence – but often reduced in production to emotion. What I’ve learned is not to fill them with feelings, but to give them structure, silence, and intention. They don’t need sympathy. They need space.

What can today’s playwrights and opera librettists learn from Shakespeare?

Not to resolve everything. Not to explain too much. Not to smooth over contradiction. The strength of Shakespeare’s work lies in its capacity to hold opposing truths. Contemporary writing often fears ambiguity. But that’s where the audience begins to think.

You taught Shakespeare at Swarthmore College – what did you notice about how younger generations feel about Shakespeare? What were the most common conversations and misapprehensions?

Many students approach Shakespeare with suspicion – they expect elitism, distance, irrelevance. But once they stop admiring the work, and start arguing with it, it becomes something else: a tool, a mirror, sometimes a provocation. What they discover is not language, but structure. Not beauty, but friction. And that’s where their interest starts to grow.

What are your future ambitions with Shakespeare – further plays or operas?

Only if the work presses itself into the present. I’m not interested in cataloguing titles. If a play opens a necessary question – and if I believe I can make that question visible – I’ll do it. Otherwise, I’ll stay silent.

Barbara Wysock's new production of Roméo et Juliette runs at Semperoper Dresden from 3 May 2025 to 11 July 2026.