About the work
"Bovary" is a full-length dance work by Christian Spuck after Gustave Flaubert's novel "Madame Bovary," premiered on 20 October 2023 at the Deutsche Oper Berlin — Spuck's first major creation as director of Staatsballett Berlin. Choreography and staging are by Spuck, with libretto and dramaturgy by Claus Spahn. The score is a montage of works by Camille Saint-Saëns, Thierry Pécou, György Ligeti and others; set (Rufus Didwiszus), costumes (Emma Ryott), lighting (Martin Gebhardt) and video (Tieni Burkhalter) intensify the psychological portrait of a woman. The evening runs around two and a half hours.
Plot
Emma Bovary is a young woman trapped in provincial France in a confining marriage to the kindly but dull country doctor Charles. Fed by romantic literature and fashion images, she has developed a notion of love, luxury and intense living that cannot be reconciled with her reality. She seeks fulfilment in affairs, social glamour and consumption — but the escape leads not to freedom but deeper into dependency. Emma falls into debt, finds her relationships disappointing, becomes entangled in lies and loses her footing. What remains at the end is shame, guilt, despair and her suicide. Spuck tells this not as a conventional narrative ballet but translates Flaubert's psychological precision into pas de deux, group tableaux and musical contrasts.
Cultural significance
Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" (1856/57) is one of the key novels of French realism and caused a scandal with its depiction of adultery, desire and bourgeois hypocrisy, even bringing Flaubert a trial for alleged immorality — which ended in acquittal. Emma Bovary is seen as a figure of misplaced desire: she wants a life like those in novels and fashion plates and consumes images of happiness until they grow stronger than her reality — a subject that feels strikingly current in an age of self-staging and escapism. Spuck cites Saint-Saëns as a French point of reference, while Ligeti and Pécou break the romantic sound and make Emma's fractured perception audible.