THERE is something very exciting about seeing imaginative, modern resettings of classics of the operatic canon. One such is Kirill Serebrennikov’s staging of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (pictured, Festival Theatre, ends today) for the Komische Oper Berlin.

Imagine, if you will, a cross between multi-millionaire art dealer Charles Saatchi and the notorious rake King Charles II. Such is the Count Almaviva in this 21st-century version on Mozart’s opus, which – with its remarkable two-level set, by Serebrennikov and his co-designer Olga Pavlyuk – looks like a ­radical remake of 1970s British TV hit Upstairs ­Downstairs.

From the outset – as the workers toil in the dingy basement laundry, while, above them, the gallery space of the Count’s mansion is readied for some new installations – the drama’s class relations are writ large.

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Down in the laundry, Susanna – betrothed of the barber-turned-valet Figaro – informs her fiancé of the Count’s dishonourable intentions towards her.

Far from evidence of his confidence in ­Figaro, the Count has moved his valet (and his bride) into his palatial home in order to have his ­dastardly way with Susanna. It isn’t long ­before the resourceful Figaro, Susanna and the ­heartbroken Countess are planning their ­imaginative revenge on the lecherous aristocrat.

The ensuing opera is magnificently ­(sometimes breathtakingly) true to the farcical intent of Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. Indeed, Serebrennikov’s scene of not one, but two acts of self-defenestration will live long in the memory.

The Count’s cynicism is evinced in the ­installation of a neon art work that exclaims “Capitalism kills love”. For all its various, ­startling innovations, the production stands by Mozart’s proto-feminist understanding that the primary victim in this tale is the genuinely heartbroken Countess.

It is she who has the opera’s most anguished and beautiful songs. On Friday evening, ­soprano Verity Wingate shone in an entirely glorious cast, delivering the aria Porgi, amor, in ­particular, with heartbreaking power.

Personally, I could easily do without ­Serebrennikov’s apparent fascination with the shallow, postmodern musings of Jean ­Baudrillard. Nevertheless, this bold and ­brilliant production should be the toast of this year’s Festival.

From classical, European fiction to ­uncomfortable and enraging American facts in Apphia Campbell’s Through the Mud (­Summerhall, until August 25). A co-production between Scottish women’s theatre ­company Stellar Quines and the Royal Lyceum Theatre, this two-hander – which is performed by Campbell and Tinashe Warikandwa – draws a compelling parallel between examples of ­racial injustice in the United States in the 1970s and in the 21st century.

The play shifts back-and-forth between the two time periods, beginning with the true story of Assata Shakur (aka Joanne Chesimard), a leading activist in, by turns, the Black Panther Party and (its offshoot) the Black Liberation Army. In 1977 Shakur was convicted of the murder of a state trooper during a gun battle in New Jersey.

In 1979 a group of her comrades broke her out of prison. Soon after, she escaped to Cuba, where she has lived ever since. The play traces her journey from New York Catholic girl to revolutionary.

The parallel narrative begins with the ­shooting dead of Black teenager Michael Brown by ­police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, ­Missouri in 2014. The killing, and the ­subsequent ­legal ­decision not to indict Wilson, led to mass ­protests and the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement.

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The drama takes us to-and-fro between the political journey of Shakur and the self-education of young Black woman Ambrosia (whose faith in the US justice system is ­shaken by the death of Michael Brown). ­Combining ­narration, scripted dialogue, song (most ­powerfully ­African-American spirituals) and projected ­video and film, the piece is a ­passionate, ­beautifully performed indictment of the ­ongoing crisis of racism in the US and beyond.

Indeed, given the far right and fascist ­violence – and the inspiring anti-fascist response – in the UK in recent weeks (not to mention the racist and misogynist Donald Trump campaign against Kamala Harris in the US), this powerful play has taken on a very immediate urgency.

At least as urgent (and at least as moving) is the world premiere of Khawla Ibraheem’s A Knock on the Roof (Traverse, until August 25). A solo piece, performed by Ibraheem herself for Piece by Piece Productions of New York City, this extraordinary dark comedy tells the story of Mariam, a young Palestinian mother in Gaza.

Set, needless to say, prior to the near total destruction of Gaza by Israel since October 7, 2023, the play depicts Mariam’s understandable obsession with the “knock on the roof” (the small bomb the Israelis sometimes dropped on Palestinian residential properties in Gaza by way of a warning that the building would be ­destroyed by a missile within five to 15 ­minutes).

We follow Mariam’s travails as – with ­ever-growing fear and meticulousness – she ­rehearses and re-rehearses her escape from her top floor apartment, carrying a bag of ­essentials and “pillowcase Noor” (a pillowcase filled with old books which weighs the same as her little boy: a concept that resonates with ­heartbreaking pathos and poetic veracity).

How far will she be able to get within five minutes, she needs to know, while carrying her heavy-sleeping son?

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Woven through this psychological torture are the previous realities of life in Gaza – the absence of Mariam’s husband (who is trying to achieve the qualifications, job and work status that might rescue his family from the Israeli ­Occupation), three generations living in one tiny apartment, infrequent access to electricity, scarcity of water.

From its beginning to its devastating end, this piece – which is played with an undeniable, ­anguished, angry humanism – reverberates with an irresistible truth.

However – as the death toll in Gaza ­surpasses 40,000 and the Netanyahu regime’s fascist ­security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir marches into the compound of the Al-Aqsa mosque with hundreds of his ultra-nationalist ­followers – the play’s most remarkable feature is the ­extent to which the horrors it depicts have been ­overtaken by insufferable events.

It speaks to the magnitude of current events in the Middle East that they tower over the tragedy of Oedipus Rex (National Museum of Scotland, until tomorrow). Sophocles’s great Attic play – which was adapted into an opera by composer Igor Stravinsky and librettist Jean Cocteau – famously tells the tale of Oedipus, King of Thebes, who unwittingly kills his father and marries his mother, thereby plunging his homeland into plague.

In Scottish Opera’s new, promenade ­production of Stravinsky’s piece for the EIF, the audience stands, either on the ground ­level, among the desperate Thebans, or up in the ­gallery, alongside the sneering gods.

The key ­figures in the drama – Queen Jocasta; her brother, Creon; the benighted seer Tiresias; and Oedipus himself – are animated statues, who step down from their pedestals as if into a classical version of Shawn Levy’s cinematic comedy Night at the Museum.

Shengzhi Ren’s Oedipus leads a ­universally excellent cast in the principal roles.

The ­professional chorus is supplemented by a large contingent of community players, who add considerable vocal heft (even if it might have been wiser to have given them less to do on the movement front).

The orchestra gives tremendous ­emotional ­expression to a resonating, sometimes ­powerfully discordant score. Wittily and ­colourfully designed, this novel staging of the opera is cleverly and rewardingly innovative.