Mr Manacorda, you’re an Italian who’s lived in Berlin for 25 years and will soon be conducting a German comic opera. How funny are the Germans?
One of my first impressions as a new arrival in Germany was your great humourist, Loriot. He was one of a kind and I liked him at once, but he’s not known in Italy. I’m a huge fan and I know everything he’s done. There’s no truth to the cliché that Germans don’t have a sense of humour. Loriot’s wit is subtle and his timing is perfect – plus he had some very smart and funny things to say about opera, which he often articulated in the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Humour is alive and kicking in our house and CSAR AND CARPENTER had a long and successful run here. Now we’re reviving the work, which has undeservedly slipped from opera house programmes.

What’s so funny about CSAR AND CARPENTER in the present day?
The entire orchestra is playing with ideas of identity and clichés. The wackiness starts with the setting: a Russian czar travels incognito to Holland. Imagine Putin walking around in disguise; that’s how off-the-wall the idea was back then. Essentially, it’s about otherness. Today, we’re often scared of what’s different, and politicians are apt to exploit that. This opera is different; it’s light-hearted about foreignness and lays the clichés on thick. The Dutch love cheese, Russians are enigmatic and powerful, Brits are stiff but refined. Hackneyed images, yet lovingly presented.

How does a conductor do comedy?
You have to slightly overdo the articulation. Take Loriot: when he wanted to make a blatant point in humoristic fashion, he accentuated slightly, speaking too fast or slow but always with refinement, never too much. When I do that with the music, we’re staging humour in the pit, not just on stage. The music always accentuates the lyrics. If the text is ironic, I can give an ironic slant to a ritardando – a slowing stretch in the music – heighten it or make it drag its feet. If the verbal humour on stage happens to depend on speed of delivery, the orchestra can pick up the tempo a bit, too.

How is Italian humour different from German humour?
I’d say the differences are pretty marked. German humour is closer to British, more oblique. You hold back more and make a point of leaving certain things unsaid. Things are more layered – at least more than Italian humour, which is straighter and very direct. And obviously it involves too much verbiage!

What’s the key to humour in opera?
Something’s got to be out of kilter or go wrong. Some kind of glitch or hitch. And it’s not always something that happens on the fringe. A while back I was conducting a very serious opera in Paris and one evening a whole bunch of things went wrong. First the curtain didn’t go up, then a red light went on at my stand while we were playing. It was chaos. The soprano launched in and then the curtain decided to rise, utter slapstick. We were creasing up in the orchestra pit. But get this: there were 3,000 people in the auditorium and they didn’t notice anything.