31oct8:00 pmJAMES' CHOICEKOMISCHE OPER BERLIN SYMPHONIC
Event Details
As a New Yorker by birth and Berliner by choice, Music Director James Gaffigan kicks off the new season with works by European composers in the USA. Erich Wolfgang
more
Event Details
As a New Yorker by birth and Berliner by choice, Music Director James Gaffigan kicks off the new season with works by European composers in the USA. Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Kurt Weill both had to leave Europe in the early 1930s because of their Jewish roots and found a new artistic home on American shores. Korngold, often mentioned in the same breath as Richard Strauss in his homeland, now devoted himself wholeheartedly to the new genre of film music, thereby becoming one of Hollywood’s defining figures.
Meanwhile, Kurt Weill, having often collaborated with Bertolt Brecht in Berlin, was now dedicating himself entirely to music theatre in New York, becoming a trailblazer in the emerging genre of musicals with works such as Lady in the Dark and One Touch of Venus.
But even at the turn of the century, great composers were already being drawn across the Atlantic. It was there that Antonín Dvořák composed not only his famous New World Symphony (No. 9), but also his equally extraordinary American Suite. Gustav Mahler likewise composed his Tenth Symphony in New York, as his final, unfinished work, thereby writing music history.
Time
(Thursday) 8:00 pm
Location
Konzerthaus Berlin – Großer Saal
Gendarmenmarkt 2 10117 Berlin
17nov6:00 pmSWEENEY TODDKOMISCHE OPER BERLIN
Event Details
With this grand musical on the stage of the Schiller Theatre, director Barrie Kosky reveals himself to be a master of the macabre. An equally dark and delightfully chilling
more
Event Details
With this grand musical on the stage of the Schiller Theatre, director Barrie Kosky reveals himself to be a master of the macabre. An equally dark and delightfully chilling thriller by Stephen Sondheim about the bloody revenge inflicted by the legendary London barber Sweeney Todd. And in the role of meat-pie queen Mrs Lovett: the fabulous Dagmar Manzel!
London, in all its dreariness. Benjamin Barker, an upstanding barber of humble beginnings, is unjustly sentenced to a long prison term by Judge Turpin, who has his eye on Barker’s beautiful wife. Years later, Barker returns with only one thing on his mind: revenge. He learns from Mrs Lovett, the completely burnt-out but business-savvy owner of a meat-pie shop, that his wife has killed herself. And so Benjamin Barker, alias Sweeney Todd, not only embarks on an extremely efficient campaign of revenge, he also joins forces with his informant to start a flourishing joint venture in the meat-pie business …
The story of the ‘demonic barber of Fleet Street’ who became a mass murderer first appeared in 1846 as a penny dreadful entitled The String of Pearls, and has since served as the basis for numerous dramatic and cinematic adaptations. In composing this thriller musical, Sondheim drew inspiration from film soundtracks as well as Richard Wagner’s use of leitmotif. Barrie Kosky stages his vision of this classic musical as a ‘children’s theatre nightmare collage’, revelling in that lust for horror, wavering between disgust and laughter, that has always fascinated audiences.
He mercilessly digs into the question of what humans are capable of when they follow the logic of revenge to the bitter end, and what’s at stake in the process.
BY THE WAY
Cannibalism has featured in myths and fairy tales since antiquity: Chronos eats his children, Titus Andronicus bakes his dead enemies into pies, and the wicked witch intends to eat Hansel for dinner.
Time
(Sunday) 6:00 pm
Location
Schillertheater – Großer Saal
Bismarckstraße 110 10625 Berlin
21nov7:30 pmSWEENEY TODDKOMISCHE OPER BERLIN
Event Details
With this grand musical on the stage of the Schiller Theatre, director Barrie Kosky reveals himself to be a master of the macabre. An equally dark and delightfully chilling
more
Event Details
With this grand musical on the stage of the Schiller Theatre, director Barrie Kosky reveals himself to be a master of the macabre. An equally dark and delightfully chilling thriller by Stephen Sondheim about the bloody revenge inflicted by the legendary London barber Sweeney Todd. And in the role of meat-pie queen Mrs Lovett: the fabulous Dagmar Manzel!
London, in all its dreariness. Benjamin Barker, an upstanding barber of humble beginnings, is unjustly sentenced to a long prison term by Judge Turpin, who has his eye on Barker’s beautiful wife. Years later, Barker returns with only one thing on his mind: revenge. He learns from Mrs Lovett, the completely burnt-out but business-savvy owner of a meat-pie shop, that his wife has killed herself. And so Benjamin Barker, alias Sweeney Todd, not only embarks on an extremely efficient campaign of revenge, he also joins forces with his informant to start a flourishing joint venture in the meat-pie business …
The story of the ‘demonic barber of Fleet Street’ who became a mass murderer first appeared in 1846 as a penny dreadful entitled The String of Pearls, and has since served as the basis for numerous dramatic and cinematic adaptations. In composing this thriller musical, Sondheim drew inspiration from film soundtracks as well as Richard Wagner’s use of leitmotif. Barrie Kosky stages his vision of this classic musical as a ‘children’s theatre nightmare collage’, revelling in that lust for horror, wavering between disgust and laughter, that has always fascinated audiences.
He mercilessly digs into the question of what humans are capable of when they follow the logic of revenge to the bitter end, and what’s at stake in the process.
BY THE WAY
Cannibalism has featured in myths and fairy tales since antiquity: Chronos eats his children, Titus Andronicus bakes his dead enemies into pies, and the wicked witch intends to eat Hansel for dinner.
Time
(Thursday) 7:30 pm
Location
Schillertheater – Großer Saal
Bismarckstraße 110 10625 Berlin
23nov7:00 pmLE NOZZE DI FIGAROKOMISCHE OPER BERLIN
Event Details
The mother of all musical comedies is coming to the Schiller Theatre! After Così fan tutte, Kirill Serebrennikov is now bringing us his second Mozart production on the stage of
more
Event Details
The mother of all musical comedies is coming to the Schiller Theatre! After Così fan tutte, Kirill Serebrennikov is now bringing us his second Mozart production on the stage of the Komische Oper Berlin.
This is really not how Figaro and Susanna imagined the night before their wedding: not only is their new bedchamber right next to the rooms of their employer Count Almaviva, Susanna fears that he might even sneak in a claim to his droit du seigneur. But these are not the only intrigues in the House of Almaviva: old Bartolo seeks revenge against Figaro for thwarting his former plans to marry the Countess himself, and last but not least, the neglected Countess Rosina is concocting her own plans to bring her supposedly love-struck husband back in line.
By the way
After Così fan tutte and The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni will follow in 2025, thus completing Serebrennikov’s staging of Mozart’s Da Ponte trilogy.
Time
(Saturday) 7:00 pm
Location
Schillertheater – Großer Saal
Bismarckstraße 110 10625 Berlin
