Tagged with 'Deutsche Oper Berlin'

About life and love in dark times: The work Canti di vita e d'amore by Luigi Nono will be performed at Musikfest Berlin on 10 September 2024. The orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin will perform under the direction of Donald Runnicles, with Lilit Davtyan (soprano) and Thomas Cilluffo (tenor) taking on the vocal roles.

The world premiere of Chaya Czernowin’s opera, Heart Chamber, for Deutsche Oper Berlin takes place on 15 November conducted by Johannes Kalitzke. The production, which has been directed by Claus Guth, is realised by a small cast of soloists consisting of Patrizia Ciofi, Noa Frenkel, Dietrich Henschel, and Terry Wey.

Czernowin has described her Deutsche Oper commission as a ‘chain of connected situations, dreams and nodal moments’ together expressing only a hint of a story. Heart Chamber is rather, as it is subtitled, ‘an enquiry about love’. The opera asks questions about what happens when we fall in love and changes love can bring, exploring love both as a desire for closeness as well as the wish for independence or as a need to overcome loneliness through an emotional bond.

This project is a departure to a new, subtle world. None of her pieces are easy to sing, but the work each one requires is worth it! She has a microscopic view on music, for example, she explores the transition of speaking and singing in tiny steps. She also understands the breathing in and out as tones. – Noa Frenkel

There will be five performances of the opera in total, with the last night of the production taking place on 6 December. Following the performances in Berlin, a DVD of the production is scheduled to be released. Also in Berlin this November, Ensemble ilinx perform Czernowin’s Lovesong and the evocatively titled, Ayre: Towed through plumes, thicket, asphalt, sawdust and hazardous air I shall not forget the sound of on 24 at the Universität der Künste Berlin.

• Chaya Czernowin – profile


• Heart Chamber – work details


• Deutsche Oper Berlin

Photo: Chaya Czernowin & Christopher McIntosh

On February 9 Korngold’s opera Der Ring des Polykrates will be performed in the USA for the first time. The opera will take place in the Winspear Opera House in Dallas, Texas and will be conducted by Emmanuel Villaume.

Written in 1914, Korngold was just seventeen years old when he finished Der Ring des Polykrates. The short comedy opera takes its text from a play by Heinrich Teweles. This one-act work by the then seventeen-year-old composer was premiered to an astonished audience at the Munich Court Theater in 1916 as part of a double bill also including Korngold's next opera, Violanta. The libretto was written by Leo Feld and Julius Korngold, the father of the composer and an esteemed music critic in Vienna.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold: Der Ring des Polykrates: The parody of an antique text

Teweles’ comedy, on which the opera is based, is a parody on the ancient Greek story of King Polykrates. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, the King’s excessive luck was thought to eventually result in a disastrous end and was therefore advised to throw away whatever he valued most in order to escape a reversal of fortune. The librettist Leo Feld adapted this story to take place in the 18th century. In Korngold’s comedy this excessive luck builds conflict between two spouses: the musician Wilhelm Arndt and his wife. Peter Vogel, a friend of the Saxon court conductor Wilhelm, advises him, just as King Polykrates, to make a sacrifice for retaining his luck. Wilhelm starts an argument with his wife about her former life, but the couple's love is strong enough to overcome all difficulties. In the end, all agree that the sacrifice that has to be offered is Vogel who tried to ruin their happiness. In the 20^th century the humorous one-act-opera was a popular German comic opera and was performed together with Violanta several times.

After the performances of Der Ring des Polykrates in Dallas, his great opera Das Wunder der Heliane can be seen at the Deutsche Oper Berlin as of 18 March.

• Erich Wolfgang Korngold - profil


• Der Ring des Polykrates - workdetails 


• Der Ring des Polykrates - information


• Das Wunder der Heliane - information

Aribert Reimann’s new opera, L’Invisible, conjures a mysterious and foreboding atmosphere. On 8 October, the world premiere of this “trilogie lyrique” will be presented at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in a production by Vasily Barkhatov conducted by Donald Runnicles.



Reimann first encountered the plays of Maurice Maeterlinck in the 1980s at the Berliner Schaubühne and was immediately inspired to write an opera, however thirty years passed before the idea became a reality. L’Invisible is based on three short Maeterlinck plays, L’Intruse, Intérieur and La Mort de Tintagiles, woven together through musical language and the recurring character of a young boy. Another Maeterlinck play, Les Aveugles also provided inspiration.

Aribert Reimann – L’Invisible: Living in the shadow of death

In L’Intruse a family waits for a doctor, called to attend to the daughter who has just given birth. However, before he arrives the blind grandfather notices death is amongst them. This opening scene is accompanied only by strings, but the texture is shattered at last by the baby’s first cry: a shrill chord in the woodwinds. At the same moment, the mother takes her last breath. Three countertenors hidden in the wings represent the invisible messenger of death and create an atmosphere of omnipresent foreboding.

In contrast, Intérieur is scored for only woodwinds. The audience peers through a window at the family. Outside, a stranger is telling the Grandfather about the eldest daughter’s suicide after he dragged her body out of the river. As the grandfather prepares to break the news to the family, the two girls in the inside room take up the melody previously sung by the countertenors. Only the young boy, Tintagiles, remains on stage to provide the link to the final scene.

In La Mort de Tintagiles the entire orchestra is used for the first time. An old queen issues the command to have all her potential heirs killed. Afraid that Tintagiles may be on her list, his sisters try unsuccessfully to protect him and the countertenors reappear as the queens’ executioners. Reimann ends the work as it opens, as if the story were to begin again.

From the moment a human is born, they live with death. Maeterlink explores this theme in his three plays. In the third, somebody is being kidnapped and murdered. Every day humans are murdered because of an order. If one drives into a crowd of people, they don’t know who their victims are. They’re invisible, just like here. – Aribert Reimann

Reimann wrote both French and German versions of the libretto, and the premiere will feature the French libretto with German and English surtitles.  L’Invisible will run at the Deutsche Oper Berlin until 31 October.

• Aribert Reimann – profile


• L'Invisible – workdetails and score


• L'Invisible at Deutsche Oper Berlin