What topics are occupying the young generation of artists? What burning questions are waiting to be addressed on the music theatre stage? What scenes, texts, sounds and images are needed to do so? To answer these questions, the Tischlerei of the Deutsche Oper Berlin is being transformed into the future laboratory of the NEW SCENES: as part of an international competition in summer 2023, three teams of composers and authors were selected to write a new piece of music theatre that will be premiered as part of a three-part evening at the Tischlerei of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. The three pieces will be performed, sung and staged by students of the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music Berlin, with whom the Deutsche Oper Berlin is now cooperating for the seventh time as part of NEW SCENES.

The evening opens with CAVE, an examination of the principles of resistance. Based on Sophocles' “Antigone”, composer Haukur þór Harðarson and librettist Sophie Fetokaki have developed a contemporary reflection on the possibilities of rebellion in a hostile environment, establishing a connection to the disruptive power of civil activism. At the same time, the ancient protagonist is psychologically examined and thus undergoes a methodical process of coming to terms with her past. The composition embeds this introspection in atmospherically delicate sounds and constantly circling moods. The result is a multiple encounter of the mythical figure Antigone with herself and with the outside world.

DESERT OF WATER tells the story of a village that has to be evacuated before flooding. Powerlessly, the characters cling to an everyday life that is increasingly falling apart, and they confront the inevitable threat in different ways: While most of them face the fact that they have to leave their homes in order to survive, one resident is not prepared to do so and clings to her living space to the bitter end. The chamber opera by composer Huihui Cheng and librettist Giuliana Kiersz describes conditions in an extreme situation and deals with the dilemma of confronting an all-encompassing catastrophe. Tension-filled soundscapes, symbolic nature poetry and a wide range of vocal techniques bring to life the complex tension of a threatening situation, evoking associations with the current issues of climate change, displacement and identity.

WHAT JOY, a ‘spherical installation’ in the words of composer Zara Ali, brings the series to a close. Together with librettist Hannah Dübgen, she created a piece of music theatre about the search for new aesthetic perspectives in a hyper-digitalised world. The plot tells of cybernetically augmented humans who can modify and expand their spectrum of perception and thus adopt a new relationship to the world and their own emotional access to it. This transhumanist hybridity is also reflected in the music, where borrowings from historical baroque music collide or merge with electronic sounds and classical playing and singing styles are transformed to the extreme. In these ambiguous spaces, WHAT JOY explores core elements of human sensuality and pleasures.

International Composition Competition of the Deutsche Oper Berlin in co-operation with the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin

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