Since the start of the current season, Titus Engel, as Conductor-in-Residence at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, has been helping to shape the theatre’s new artistic direction.
The Deutsche Oper Berlin Orchestra’s first symphony concert of the season will take place on 8 September in a special setting: the Musikfest Berlin is presenting the concert at the Konzerthaus am Gendarmenmarkt. The programme features two works which – separated by around a hundred years – blend various spiritual traditions into monumental Gesamtkunstwerke. Michaels Reise um die Welt ("Michael’s Journey Around the Earth") is part of Stockhausen’s opera Donnerstag ("Thursday"), which in turn forms part of the cycle Light, comprising 29 hours of pure music. In Michaels Reise, the solo trumpet (Paul Hübner) represents the protagonist on his symbolic journey into his own inner self, culminating in an ascension to heaven.
Richard Wagner also charted a spiritual hero’s journey in his ‘stage consecration festival play’ Parsifal, excerpts of which will be performed to conclude the evening. Serving as a link between these works is John Cage’s seminal piece 4′33″, which, with its radical concept, has redefined the very act of listening.
The concert performance of Michaels Reise marks the start of the Deutsche Oper Berlin’s thematic focus on Stockhausen and Cage, co-curated by Titus Engel.
