New Scenes – 3 Burnings at the Stake
Sun, 02. May 2021, 20:00
An Opera-Triptychon by von Sara Glojnarić, Sergey Kim und Lorenzo Troiani
Hounded as the devil’s consort, honoured and dreaded as magicians, sought-after as healers, feared, laughed at, psychoanalysed, studied by ethnologists, shrouded in esoteric quasi-science… In one of the great crimes of early modern times, supposed witches were burned at the stake the length and breadth of Europe. These persecuted women symbolise the horror and fascination stemming from the unchronicled murk from which our civilisation grew, from the conviction that certain powers are mightier than human reason and that people can make contact with them, surrender to them, perchance even get to understand them.
Witches and other female workers of wizardry, the stake as the totem of their persecution – and questions regarding the topicality and intensity of the modern obsession with witches – are the bases for works by three composers who were selected in the preliminary phase of the NEW SCENES International Composition Competition and are now working with three young librettists to produce a triptych of musical theatre. The result - produced by the Deutsche Oper Berlin and mounted in its No.2 performance space, the Tischlerei – will be staged, sung and acted by students of the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin. This is the fifth NEW SCENES collaboration between the two institutions with a view to producing new musical theatre, gauging the contemporaneity of the genre and presenting young artists as part of a professional production.
Werkinfo:
Libretto by Dorian Brunz, Lea Mantel and Peter Neugschwentner
First performed on 30th April 2021 at the Tischlerei Deutsche Oper Berlin
Commissioned work of Deutsche Oper Berlin and Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin