The 2015/16 season - Komische Oper Berlin

Press release dated 18/3/2015/acr
The 2015/16 season – Continuing the tradition
8 new stage productions, 3 concert productions, 1 world premiere
premi re and 1 German
premiere,
re, 3 festivals, 15 revivals, 32 concerts, and more ...
From Tchaikovsky and Spoliansky via Marschner and Massenet, to Kats-Chernin
Chernin and HK Gruber –
from operas and operettas to revues and musicals: In their fourth season, Artistic Director Barrie
Kosky, General Musical Director Henrik Nánási and Managing Director Susanne Moser present a
varied programme
rogramme of new productions at the Komische Oper Berlin, and – in keeping with this
opera house’s traditions – reflect as broad a spectrum of musical theatre as possible.
Eight stage productions and three concert productions will be premièred this season, including
classics as well as new interpretations of famous works, rare operettas, the first Berlin production
of Massenet’s fairytale opera Cendrillon,
Cendrillon the German premiere of HK Gruber’s Geschichten aus dem
Wiener Wald (Tales from the Vienna Woods),
Woods) and the world premiere
re of the new children’s
children opera
Schneewittchen und die 77 Zwerge (Snow White and the 77 Dwarves).
Dwarves) The opera house’s ensemble, which
includes Nicole Chevalier, Günter Papendell and Dominik Köninger, is joined by guests such as
Dagmar Manzel, Katharine Mehrling, Max Hopp and Geschwister Pfister, in both new and familiar
roles. And for the symphony concerts, the orchestra of the Komische Oper Berlin will be joined by
soloists such as Mischa Maisky, Michael Barenboim and Gabriela Montero, as well as by guest
conductors including Sir Neville Marriner, Rudolf Buchbinder and Patrick Lange.
Numerous successful and exciting productions from recent seasons will be revived, including Die
Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), West Side Story; Eine Frau, die weiß,
weiß, was sie will! (A Woman who Knows what
she Wants!) and Ball im Savoy (Ball at the Savoy) from the 2014/15 season, and Der feurige Engel (The
Fiery Angel), Xerxes, Castor et Pollux and Kiss me, Kate from earlier seasons. The programming’s
programming variety
reflects the diversity of Berlin and its audience. Barrie Kosky: "The Komische Oper Berlin breathes
to the beat of Berlin, in rhythm with its history, its cultural life, and above all its inhabitants."
Komische Oper Berlin’s production of Mozart’s
Mozart Magic Flute by Barrie Kosky and the British
theatre group “1927” continues its success story. After being taken into repertoire by Los
Angeles Opera, Deutsche Oper am Rhein and Minnesota Opera as well as being performed on
tour in Mannheim and St. Pölten, it will be presented
presented by Teatro Real Madrid and Finnish
National Opera Helsinki in the next season.
season In addition, Komische Oper Berlin will show the
production on tour at the Edinburgh Festival and in China (Shanghai,
(
Xiamen).
Stiftung Oper in Berlin/Komische Oper Berlin
Behrenstraße 55–57, D-10117 Berlin
Press enquiries: +49 (0)30 20260 370
Fax +49 (0)30 20260 366
Dr. Andrea C. Röber
Press Officer
[email protected]
www.komische-oper-berlin.de
Season 2015/16
New productions and Offenbach festival
Les Contes d’Hoffmann
Jacques Offenbach
Musical direction Stefan Blunier
Staging Barrie Kosky
Premiere October 2, 2015
Director Barrie Kosky presents Offenbach’s
Offenbach surreal and fantastical story as the disturbing
nightmare of an artist who is in danger
dange of losing ever more of his own self – in a production
with only a single soprano in all three female roles, but a total of seven performers in the
Hoffmann role. Here, the title role in the opera’s
opera first two acts will be sung for the first time in
the piece’s 132-year
year performance history in the way that the composer originally planned: by a
baritone!
Offenbach, the Cologne-born
born Jew in Paris, has fused Jewish, German and French elements in
his music to form something new, something which shaped the Paris music
music scene to such an
extent that it today seems genuinely French to us.
Schneewittchen und die 77 Zwerge (Snow
(
White and the 77 Dwarves)
Elena Kats-Chernin
Musical direction Pawel Poplawski
Staging Christian von Götz
World premiere November 1, 2015
201 – Commissioned by Komische Oper Berlin
The popular classic fairytale by the brothers Grimm premières in a new, witty and cheeky
version for the opera stage. A strong-willed
strong willed princess, a dancing white rabbit, a beauty-obsessed
beauty
stepmother and 77 small helpful dwarves
dwar are the protagonists in this fast-paced
paced children’s
children
opera by the Uzbek-Australian
Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin.
Kats
My Fair Lady
Frederick Loewe
Musical direction Kristiina Poska
Staging Andreas Homoki
Premiere November 28, 2015
Katharine Mehrling, multiple award winner and a firm favourite with Berlin audiences, as the
stubborn and charming Eliza Doolittle, and Max Hopp as the eccentric Professor Higgins in
one of the most popular musicals of all time.
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Professor Henry Higgins, a leading expert in phonetics and a passionate defender of proper
elocution, makes a bet with the similarly-minded
similarly minded Colonel Pickering: using the young flower
girl Eliza Doolittle, who can only express herself in the coarse dialect of the lower classes,
Higgins wishes to prove that the brilliant
brilliant polish which proper elocution provides opens the
doors to the highest echelons of society. Yet what Higgins forgets on his path to success is that
Eliza is no guinea pig, but a person – with and without an accent!
The Circus Princess (concert performance)
per
Emmerich Kálmán
Musical direction Stefan Soltesz
Premiere December 20, 2015
As always in the run-up
up to Christmas, we this year usher in a resounding operetta sensation by
Emmerich Kálmán! This time it is diseuse Désirée Nick who, in the role of head
head animal tamer,
presents the 90-minute-long
long programme of the Stanislawski circus in her accustomed cheeky
manner. And conductor Stefan Soltesz takes on the role of the (sound) magician who has the
knack of wringing ever-new
new effects from Kálmán’s
Kálmán score.
Following on from The Yankee Princess and Countess Maritza,, the dream team of KálmánKálmán
Brammer-Grünwald
Grünwald was able to achieve another global hit with The Circus Princess,, which just
two months after its celebrated première in Vienna in 1926 was also able to take
take the Metropol
Theatre (what is today the Komische Oper Berlin) by storm. Kálmán lovers can feast their ears
on soulful melodies such as »Two fairytale eyes« and »One day my time will come«, and
numbers which evoke the world of the circus, such as »The little
lit girls in tights«.
Jewgeni Onegin (Eugene
Eugene Onegin)
Onegin
Pjotr I. Tschaikowski
Musical direction Henrik Nánási
Staging Barrie Kosky
Premiere January 31, 2016
Artistic director and head director Barrie Kosky takes on one of the greatest unhappy love
stories off operatic literature: Tchaikovsky’s
Tchaikovsky Eugene Onegin.. Following on from his comedic Don
Giovanni in the previous season, baritone Günter Papendell once more proves his range as a
vocalist and actor in the role of the titular hero who suffers as a result of his
his own arrogance.
It was not the stuff of grand opera, but the emotions of real people, »a conflict which truly
touches me«, which inspired Tchaikovsky when he achieved the first great success of his
operatic career with Eugene Onegin.
Onegin Poetic richness was more important to the composer than a
fast-paced
paced dramatic plot. Warm, heart-felt
heart felt melodies, choruses in the Russian folk tradition and
a richly instrumented orchestral sound spirit audiences away into the inner worlds of the
protagonists, who – as so often with Tchaikovsky – cannot escape their destiny.
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Fantasio (concert performance)
performance
Jacques Offenbach
Musical direction Titus Engel
Premiere February 13, 2016
A première after 125 years! For the first time, Offenbach’s
Offenbach opéra comique Fantasio will sound
the wayy the composer originally intended: with a tenor in the title role. Dominique Horwitz,
an actor and chansonnier with French roots, leads us through the plot about an unhappy
princess and her student admirer.
Life punishes those who arrive late – this is sometimes
metimes also true of high art! Due to the
Franco-Prussian War, Fantasio was first staged in 1872, some two years after it was completed.
The composer’s utterly romantic world view had become completely superannuated in the
break-neck
neck course of events during
during those few short years. Over a hundred years had to pass
before people learned to appreciate this work with different eyes and ears. This is both a
revival and a new discovery at once!
Der Vampyr (The Vampire)
nach Heinrich Marschner
Musical direction Antony
tony Hermus
Staging Antú Romero Nunes
Premiere March 20, 2016
Heinrich Marschner’s The Vampire is viewed as the epitome of German Gothic romance.
Drawing on Carl Maria von Weber’s
Weber The Marksman,, Marschner goes in search of a musical
language for the dark and
d the demonic, and in doing so paves the way for Richard Wagner. The
young director Antú Romero Nunes uses Marschner’s
Marschner grand romantic opera as the starting
point for a captivating journey into the eerie realm of the pale, bloodsucking seducer of
women. Warning:
ning: you may get goosebumps! In recent years, director Antú Romero Nunes has
above all made a name for himself with imaginative and unconventional treatments of classics
such as Schiller’s The Robbers at the Maxim Gorki Theatre, and Don Juan. Last Party and Moby
Dick at the Thalia Theater Hamburg. In his engagement with Marschner’s
Marschner opera, he works
together with Dessau’s general music director, Antony Hermus, as the Master of Ceremonies
in order to explore the heart of the vampire myth in all its various iterations
it
– and the
audience’s enjoyment of the thrill provided by fear!
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Die Geschwister Pfister in
Heute Nacht oder nie (Tonight
Tonight or Never)
Ne
– The Spoliansky-Revue
Musical direction Kai Tietje
Staging Stefan Huber
Premiere April 19, 2016
Following their overwhelming success in the operetta Clivia,, the Geschwister Pfister (the
Pfister siblings) and actor Stefan Kurt return with an homage to the master of entertaining,
satirical cabaret songs and the great revues of the Weimar Republic: an opulent proscenium
prosceniu
show with famous and less famous jewels written by the Jewish-Russian
Jewish Russian composer Mischa
Spoliansky.
He was one of the greats of the Weimar Republic – and yet he never achieved the same
acclaim as his rival, Friedrich Hollaender, alongside whom Mischa Spoliansky
Spoliansky performed and
composed each evening in Max Reinhardt’s
Reinhardt famous cabaret »Schall und Rauch« in the cellar of
the Großes Schauspielhaus. Like Friedrich Hollaender and so many others, Spoliansky, a
Russian-born
born Jew who had lampooned the threat of the »brown
»brown might«, had to flee Germany
after the National Socialists came to power. Due to his international fame, he was able to
continue his career in exile in England, working predominantly as a film composer. He died in
1985 in London at the age of 86. His melodies
mel
have long since been immortalised.
Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald (Tales
(
from the Vienna Woods)
HK Gruber
Musical direction Hendrik Vestmann
Staging Michał Zadara
Premiere May 22, 2016
Ödön von Horváth’s deeply melancholic folk piece, which premièred at the Deutsches Theater
in 1931 under the artistic directorship of Max Reinhardt, in a scoring by the Austrian
composer KH Gruber. This opera, which premièred
premièred to great acclaim at the Bregenz Festival in
July 2014, will be performed in Germany for the first time at the Komische Oper Berlin in a
production by the young Polish director Michał Zadara, who will thereby also be giving his
German début as an operaa director. On the banks of the »beautiful blue Danube«, the toy
merchant Leopold, known as the »king of magic«, is celebrating the betrothal of his daughter
Marianne to the upstanding butcher Oskar. Her encounter with the sensitive dreamer Alfred
gives Marianne
rianne the courage to perform an act of self-determination:
self determination: virtually overpowered by a
passion she has hitherto never experienced, Marianne breaks off her engagement in order to
find happiness by Alfred’s side. Yet the dream of happiness is all too soon overtaken
o ertaken by reality
...
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Le clemenza di Tito (concert performance)
performance
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Musical direction Henrik Nánási
Premiere May 27, 2016
Emperor Titus becomes embroiled in a musical thriller involving love, intrigue, political power
struggles and hubris
ris in ancient Rome. Following productions of his early works Il re pastore and
Lucio Silla in the preceding two seasons, Mozart’s
Mozart penultimate opera, written at the same time
as The Magic Flute,, is now to receive its concert performance.
Cendrillon (Cinderella)
Jules Massenet
Musical direction Henrik Nánási
Staging Damiano Michieletto
Premiere June 12, 2016
Damiano Michieletto is one of the world’s
world most sought-after
after young directors. His production
of La Bohème at the Salzburg Festival was highly acclaimed both by audiences and the press.
The Venice-born
born Michieletto will introduce himself to Berlin audiences with a piece whose
story is known to all but whose music may still be unfamiliar to many: Cendrillon (Cinderella),
(Cinderella)
with a magically romantic score by Jules
J
Massenet. Massenet emphasises the magical and
dreamlike qualities of the story, wholly focusing in his version on the happiness of the two
lovers and the threats that happiness faces. The airy orchestral sounds so typical of latelate
Romantic French opera make the prince and Cinderella appear as beings from a world which
seems to represent a bare caricature of now questionable norms and values, while also artfully
referencing and exaggeratedly parodying Baroque musical forms.
Offenbach Festival
10.2.2016—17.2.2016
For an entire week, the "Mozart of the Champs-Elysée"
Champs
– Jacques Offenbach – will reign
supreme at the Behrenstraße. The Komische Oper Berlin presents four very different works by
this composer: his opéra bouffe La Belle-Hélène, created during thee era of his great operetta
successes; his posthumously premièred fantastical opera Les Contes d’Hoffmann – both
productions staged by artistic director and head director Barrie Kosky – and two rare concert
performances: the opéra comique Fantasio and, as a late-night operetta, the single--act Mr
Choufleuri’s Salon.
Jacques Offenbach, who was born in Cologne in 1819 and who in the Paris of the Second
Empire achieved global acclaim as the grand master of "little" musical theatre, has gone down
in the annals off cultural history as the father of operetta in particular. The fact that his Les
Contes d’Hoffmann,, which today forms part of the standard repertoire of international opera
houses, was not his only attempt at the "grand" genre is less well-known.
well known. Alongside
Alongsid The Rhine
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Nixies,, whose fairy music Offenbach reused as a barcarole in Les Contes d’Hoffmann,, his most
ambitious attempt at opéra comique, Fantasio, is particularly worthy of attention – it is an
unfairly forgotten masterpiece! The week-long
week
programme is complemented by expert talks
given by renowned experts on the life and works of Jacques Offenbach.
For full information on the Komische Oper Berlin programme for the 2015/16 seasons including all festivals
and concerts please visit www.komische-oper-berlin.de.
www.komische
Press contact
Dr. Andrea C. Röber, Press officer
Phone (030) 20 260 370
Fax
(030) 20 260 366
E-Mail a.roeber@komische-oper
oper-berlin.de
Newsroom: www.komische-oper
oper-berlin.de/newsroom
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Season 2015/16
Numbers and facts
Number of performances
Total of performances
on the main stage and in the foyer:
foyer
Opera, operetta, musical etc.
Concerts and special events
178
48
Guided tours
74
Extras:
Introduction matinees
After Show Lounges
After show talk “Nachgefragt“
Workshops (for under 18s)
Salon of the Komische Oper Berlin
and the Schering Foundation
7
14
7
350
4
Staatsballett Berlin:
Vielfältigkeit. Formen von Stille und Leere
Ghosts (Norwegian
Norwegian National Ballet)
18
2
11 premieres
Les Contes d’Hoffmann
2 October 2015
Schneewittchen und die 77 Zwerge (Snow White and the 77 Dwarves)
1 November 2015
My Fair Lady
28 November 2015
Die Zirkusprinzessin (The Circus Princess) – concert performance
20 December 2015
Jewgeni Onegin (Eugene Onegin)
31 January 2016
Fantasio – concert performance
13 February 2016
Der Vampyr
20 March 2016
Heute Nacht oder nie – Die Spoliansky-Revue
Spoliansky
1 April 2016
Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald
22 May 2016
La clemenza di Tito – concert performance
27 May 2016
Cendrillon (Cinderella)
12 June 2016
Last update:: 18 March 2015 /Subject to change!
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15 revivals
Ball im Savoy (Ball at the Savoy)
10 September 2015
Giulio Cesare in Egitto
11 September 2015
West Side Story
8 October 2015
Eine Frau, die weiß, was sie will! (A
A Woman whon knows what she wants!)
24 October 2015
Die schöne Helena (La Belle-Hélène)
Hélène)
6 November 2015
Hänsel und Gretel
6 December 2015
Der feurige Engel (The Fiery Angel)
10 December 2015
Kiss me, Kate
7 January 2016
Xerxes
5 February 2016
Das Gespenst von Canterville (TheCanterville Ghost) 25 February 2016
Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute)
24 March 2016
Don Giovanni
15 April 2016
Clivia
22 April 2016
Die Hochzeit des Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro)
1 May 2016
Castor et Pollux
22. June 2016
Development of attendance and number of performances
2011/12
2012/13
2013/14
2014/2015
Sep 14 to Feb 15
Percentage of total seats sold
65,78 %
Visitors
166.436
Performances
228
75,04 %
183.336
226
84,89 %
214.846
239
93,94 %
125.896
125
Economic key numbers 2014
201
Finances
Public funding:
Earnings through ticket sales etc.:
etc.
Staff
Total:
Ensemble:
Opernstudio (Young singers’ programme):
programme)
Orchestra academy:
Orchestra:
Chorsolisten (choir):
Last update: 18 March 2015 /Subject to change!
hange!
31 mio €
9,1 mio €
420 (on average)
from 26 countries
22
5
7
112
60
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Season 2015/16
Barrie Kosky
Artistic
istic Director (Intendant and Chefregisseur)
Barrie Kosky has been the Artistic Director (Intendant and Chefregisseur) of the
Komische Oper Berlin since 2012.
2012 At the end of his first season the Komische
Oper was voted »Opera House of the Year« from 50 international
int
opera
journalists. Barrie Kosky’s work in Berlin has included The Monteverdi Trilogy, The
Magic Flute, Ball im Savoy, Rusalka, Iphigenie in Tauris, Kiss Me,Kate, Rigoletto, The
Marriage of Figaro, Seven Deadly Sins, West Side Story,
Story La Belle-Hélène; Eine Frau, die
weiß, was sie will! (A woman who knows what she wants!) and Le Grand Macabre. In
2015 he will also be staging Schönberg’s
Schönberg Moses und Aron, conducted by Vladimir
Jurowski.
Future plans include opera productions at Royal Opera House Covent Garden,
Glyndebourne, Teatro Real Madrid, Bayerische Staatsoper Munich, Opernhaus
Oper
Zürich, Oper Frankfurt, the Finnish National Opera and Los Angeles Opera. In
2017 he will stage Wagner’s The Mastersingers of Nuremberg at the Bayreuth Festival.
Barrie Kosky hass directed productions for the Bayerische Staatsoper Munich,
Berlin Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Netherlands Opera, Oper Frankfurt, Los
Angeles Opera, English National Opera, Vienna Staatsoper, Oper Graz,
Staatsoper Hannover, Aalto Oper Essen, Deutsches Theater
Th
Berlin,
Schauspielhaus Frankfurt.
Barrie Kosky was Artistic Director of the Schauspielhaus Vienna from 2001-2005,
2001 2005,
Artistic Director of the 1996 Adelaide Festival and has directed opera and theatre
productions for Opera Australia, Sydney Theatre Company,
Compa Melbourne Theatre
Company and the Sydney and Melbourne International Festivals.
Productions directed by Barrie Kosky:
Premieres
Les Contes d‘Hoffmann
Jacques Offenbach
Conductor Stefan Blunier
Premiere 2 October 2015
Last update: 18 March 2015 /Subject to change!
hange!
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Jewgeni Onegin
Pjotr I. Tschaikowski
Conductor Henrik Nánási
Premiere 31 January 2016
Revivals 2015/16
Ball im Savoy
Paul Abraham
Conductor Adam Benzwi
Revival 10 September 2015
West Side Story
Leonard Bernstein
Musikalische Leitung Kristiina Poska/Koen Schoots
Staging Barrie Kosky, Ottoo Pichler
Revival 8 October 2015
Eine Frau, die weiß, was sie will! (A Woman who Knows what she Wants!)
Oscar Straus
Conductor Adam Benzwi
Revival 24 October 2015
Die schöne Helena (La Belle-Hélène)
Hélène)
Jacques Offenbach
Conductor Kristiina Poska
Revival 6 November 2015
Kiss me, Kate
Cole Porter
Conductor Koen Schoots
Revival 7 January 2016
Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Conductor Henrik Nánási/Hendrik Vestmann
Staging Suzanne Andrade (»1927«) und Barrie Kosky
Revival 24 March 2016
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Die Hochzeit des Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Conductor N. N.
Revival1 June 2016
Castor et Pollux
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Conductor Christian Curnyn
Revival 22 June 2016
Presscontact
Dr. Andrea C. Röber, Press officer
cer
Phone (030) 20 260 370
Fax
(030) 20 260 366
oper-berlin.de
E-Mail a.roeber@komische-oper
Newsroom: www.komische-oper
oper-berlin.de/newsroom
Last update: 18 March 2015 /Subject to change!
hange!
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