Adriana Kussmaul
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General Management
29.01. 19:00
Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall
On 1 July a world premiere at the Opera Stuttgart is hoping to be ground-breaking in the true sense of the world: Toshio Hosokawa’s Erdbeben. Träume (“Earthquake. Dreams”) is based on Heinrich von Kleist’s novella The Earthquake in Chile. Marcel Beyer, winner of the Kleist Prize in 2014 and Büchner Prize in 2016, transforms this parable about the instability of humanity in the face of threatening situations into a libretto in which the corruptibility of the masses also plays an important role. This inspired Toshio Hosokawa to create a leading role for the Staatsopernchor Stuttgart, nine-time winners of the “Opera Choir of the Year”. Intendant Jossi Wieler will bring Toshio Hosokawa’s work to the stage with director Sergio Morabito and stage design by Anna Viebrock, and with this production bids farewell to the city, as too does long-standing music director Sylvain Cambreling, who leads the premiere on the eve of his 70th birthday....
Two years after its celebrated premiere, Toshio Hosokawa’s opera Stilles Meer is being revived at the Hamburg State Opera from 31 January, in the original production by Japanese director Oriza Hirata and the musical direction once again taken by Kent Nagano. The work was enthusiastically received by critics and audiences alike; NMZ magazine commented that “Hosakawa’s sounds are so finely tuned, they generate a real undertow,” whilst BR-Klassik praised “a tremendously subtle, tentative drama […] an intense interaction with moments of tension.” Stilles Meer deals with traditional subject matter from Noh theatre, brought up to date in the context of Fukushima. Toshio Hosokawa gave an interview about the opera and its relationship to the Fukushima catastrophe during a visit to Berlin at the end of 2015....
The evening / is bitter / for those / whose lover is as far / as the sky.
(Japan, unknown poet, 920 AD)...
On 31 May, Toshio Hosokawa was invited by the Mozartfest Würzburg to give a speech during the MozartLabor (Mozart Laboratory), a three-day symposium for academics, composers, musicians and music lovers. While describing his specific perspective on Mozart’s music, he took the opportunity to reflect on his own cultural and musical background, and on how Western and Japanese art deals with sorrow and mortality....
It is always a sensation for the dance world when the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan brings one of their productions to Germany. The great dance critic Jochen Schmidt described the company’s performance of the trilogy Cursive in the Berliner Haus der Kulturen der Welt in 2006 as, "Currently the most relevant dance piece in the world," and Pina Bausch warmly welcomed the ensemble in 2008 to her NRW International Dance Festival with great enthusiasm. The productions that have been performed in Germany over the last two decades are without exception electrifying and have received high praise from audiences and critics alike....