Alexandra Derbeneva, PhD

Alexandra Derbeneva is an art historian, opera scholar and critic. She graduated from the St Petersburg Theatre Academy and earned her PhD at the Russian Institute of Art History, affiliated with the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Her doctoral thesis explored the mythological meanings of Mikhail Glinka's Ruslan and Lyudmila and their transformations through successive stage interpretations. Her academic interests centre on opera as an art form whose meanings evolve across generations, continually opening up new possibilities for theatrical reinterpretation.

Over the past decade, her research has focused on human behaviour from a psychoanalytic perspective, exploring how unconscious forces shape our desires, decisions and inner conflicts.

As an opera critic, she is particularly drawn to directors who reveal new layers of meaning in familiar operas through their interpretations. She examines the multilayered narratives they construct and approaches opera not merely as a musical event, but as a statement about humanity and the world we inhabit.

Her passion is discovering genuine works of art in which music, direction, dramatic action and visual imagery come together as a coherent artistic whole.

Based in Slovakia, Alexandra regularly attends opera productions in Vienna, Prague, Brno, Budapest, Salzburg, Milan and Rome.

A review of La Calisto at Theater an der Wien, published in the December issue of OPERA magazine.

What lies behind the whims of the forces that govern our lives?

In Stefan Herheim’s new production of Cavalli’s La Calisto, which opened the season at the MusikTheater an der Wien on September 16, the director offered no immediate answer. Instead, he drew us into a visual feast through the sets and costumes of Silke Bauer and Yashi: a lavish, indecent and very funny carnival.

Gender, appearance and social roles shifted before our eyes.

An issue of OPERA magazine

Theater an der Wien

Cavalli’s La Calisto: The illusion of meaning

The gods no longer rule our destinies. We stopped believing in them long ago. But does that mean we have finally become free?

At Vienna’s Theater an der Wien, Stefan Herheim transforms Cavalli’s Baroque opera La Calisto into a sumptuous, outrageously irreverent and irresistibly funny carnival. Jupiter changes his appearance and his voice, Mercury devises ever more elaborate intrigues, and Diana preaches fidelity to principles she herself cannot uphold. Calisto, meanwhile, evolves from a victim of divine caprice into an accomplice in a game where sex becomes a means of social advancement. The audience roars with laughter. Until, little by little, the laughter begins to feel uncomfortable.

For beneath this carnival lies something far more intriguing. What if the gods who determine Calisto’s fate do not exist outside her, but within her? What if Mercury represents our endlessly resourceful intellect, Jupiter our relationship with power, Juno the inner law that demands punishment even when justice has nothing to do with it, and Diana the feelings that so persistently contradict what we believe about ourselves? The entire story then becomes a drama of the unconscious. And a paradox emerges: we create our own destinies through decisions whose deepest meaning remains a mystery even to ourselves.

My review of Stefan Herheim’s La Calisto in Seen and Heard International.

Read the review on Seen and Heard International

The Teatro di San Carlo in Naples

Claus Guth’s Mitridate in Naples: Who is really shaping our lives?

What if the person we love exists largely in our imagination? What if our struggle for freedom only binds us more tightly to the very person we are trying to escape? One of Mitridate’s sons mistakes his own fantasies for love. The other rebels against his father, yet everything he strives for already belongs to him: power, status, a woman. He does not seek to build a life of his own. He wants to become Mitridate in Mitridate’s place.

At Naples’ Teatro di San Carlo, Claus Guth transforms Mozart’s early opera into an exploration of the unconscious. An opulent villa, where people explain their actions in terms of love, loyalty and free will, exists alongside another realm in which those explanations fall apart. Here, arias cease to be pauses in the action: it is precisely when nothing seems to be happening on stage that the real drama unfolds. And gradually, a deeply unsettling question emerges: who is really making the decisions we believe to be our own?

My review of Claus Guth’s Mitridate in the international publication Seen and Heard International.

Read the review on Seen and Heard International

For collaboration enquiries, please contact me by email with

“Opera Review” in the subject line.

derbenevaalexandra@gmail.com