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Giuseppe Verdi in May

Aida

Giuseppe Verdi [1813 – 1901]

03
Saturday
May
19:30 - 22:45
C prices: € 108.00 / 90.00 / 64.00 / 40.00 / 26.00
Buy tickets
Modified seating plan [members of chorus and orchestra will be seated amongst the audience]
Information about the work

Opera lirica in four acts
Libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni based on a draft by Auguste Mariette, developed by Camille Du Locle in collaboration with Giuseppe Verdi
World premiere 24th December 1871 in Cairo
Premiere at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, 22nd November 2015

3 hrs 15 mins / 1 interval

In Italian language with German and English surtitles

Pre-performance lecture (in German): 45 minutes prior to each performance

recommended from 15 years on
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Our thanks to our partners

Kindly supported by Förderkreis der Deutschen Oper Berlin e. V.

03
Saturday
May
19:30 - 22:45
C prices: € 108.00 / 90.00 / 64.00 / 40.00 / 26.00
Buy tickets
Modified seating plan [members of chorus and orchestra will be seated amongst the audience]
Cast
the content

About the work
“Amore, sommissione, dolcezza” – the traits that Giuseppe Verdi gave his eponymous heroine, Aida, who embodies pure love, tenderness and submissiveness. And these characteristics put her firmly in the tradition of 19th-century female protagonists who were not so much fully rounded personalities as sex objects and a focus for male fantasies, women whose inevitable fate was to die of a broken heart. And Aida is no different.

But in a departure from Verdi’s earlier operas AIDA offers a different model to that of the doomed love affair, and it comes in the form of Amneris, whom Verdi describes as “molto vivacità” in his list of protagonists. Amneris seethes with life energy, aggressively defending her love. She is a woman who could hold down a relationship.

Radames, on the other hand, the man caught between Aida and Amneris, cannot commit to the real world. He builds Aida up in his mind, transfixed by the aloof, “exotic” woman. In love with his image of an angelic figure, Radames dreams of struggling heroically against misery and repression. Radames stages his heroic acts in the full glare of publicity, while wincing at his own failure to reconcile utopic love with a political utopia - because the object of his desire is doomed anyway and the rescue of POWs and the downtrodden is not only futile but also linked to the use of violence.

So, we have an unrealistic hero, plagued by his own angst, as the linchpin of an opera that is arguably Giuseppe Verdi’s most pessimistic, ending as it does with Radames abdicating from life and withdrawing into a granite mausoleum. Aida’s death also represents the end of the utopia.


About the production
With this in mind, director Benedikt von Peter sees Verdi’s grand opéra as a “requiem to utopia”, a work that never escapes the gaze of the public, and the action of his AIDA extends to all corners of the auditorium. As in other productions of his, von Peter opens up the opera house’s musical architecture, spreading it the length and breadth of the auditorium. It’s a musical structure that ranges from full-throated choruses of a nation at war to the fragile theme of the work: the loneliness of Radames, Amneris and Aida. The three protagonists act and react on the proscenium flanked by two corpuses: the orchestra on the main stage and the opera chorus placed amongst the audience. The public, then, sitting in the midst of the music, are getting a close-up experience of Verdi’s score.

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05
DEC

Adventskalender in der Tischlerei: Das 5. Fensterchen

Today in the Tischlerei: ‘Rossini, Liszt and more’
with Kangyoon Shine Lee (tenor) and Songyeon Catarina Kim (piano)
5pm / Tischlerei
Duration: approx. 25 minutes / free admission


The evening begins with musical declarations of love: love is illuminated in all its facets – from the idealised, the yearning to the devoted and the melancholy – in three songs by Franz Liszt and an aria from Rossini's IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA. Franz Liszt's ‘Enfant, si j'etais roi’ (‘Child, if I were king’) and ‘Oh! Quand je dors’ (‘Oh! When I sleep’) are settings of poems by Victor Hugo. In the first, the beloved is given everything imaginable – but it can never be enough. The second poem describes a nocturnal vision of the beloved, who appears like an angel, kisses the sleeping person and fills them with heavenly love. Liszt's ‘Liebestraum Nr. 3’ (‘Oh dear, as long as you can love’) is one of a series of three songs that Liszt later arranged in a purely instrumental form and which became emblematic of romantic piano music. The original text was written by Ferdinand Freiligrath and deals with the transience of love and the resulting need to cherish and cultivate it in the here and now. You will hear the Korean pianist Songyeon Catarina Kim at the piano. She then lovingly accompanies our ensemble member Kangyoon Shine Lee in an aria that he will sing again on our main stage from 31 March 2025, when he takes on the role of Count Almaviva in Katharina Thalbach's production of Rossini's IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA: the cavatina ‘Ecco, ridente in cielo’. In it, Almaviva sings about the beauty of the morning and his ardent love for Rosina – it is a lyrical and romantic beginning to an otherwise predominantly comedic opera. It is followed by the song ‘La danza’ from Rossini's collection of songs ‘Les soirées musicales’, published about 20 years later, which describes the joyful hustle and bustle of a Neapolitan festival. The musical basis for this song is the tarantella, a fast, rhythmic folk dance from southern Italy. The programme will conclude with a contemplative Christmas favourite, ‘O Holy Night’.

Lyric tenor Kangyoon Shine Lee was born in Seoul. He first graduated from the Korea National University of Arts before studying with Kammersänger Prof. Roman Trekel at the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin from 2022. In 2021, Kangyoon Shine Lee won the Belvedere Competition and received an engagement at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. He made his house debut on 27 December 2022 as Almaviva in Rossini's IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA and also sang in DAS WUNDER DER HELIANE. In the 2024/25 season, he will be part of the ensemble here at the theatre and can be heard in roles such as Tamino in Mozart's MAGIC FLUTE and the children's version THE FAIRY TALE OF THE MAGIC FLUTE, as Count von Lerma / DON CARLO, Cavalier Belfiore / IL VIAGGIO A REIMS, Malcolm / MACBETH, Walther von der Vogelweide / TANNHÄUSER and Pang / TURANDOT.

The South Korean pianist Songyeon Catarina Kim studied piano at Kyunghee University in Seoul. She has won numerous Korean and international competitions. Since 2021, she has been studying Lied interpretation with Prof. Wolfram Rieger at the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin. She is currently studying chamber music with Prof. Wolfram Rieger as part of her concert exam. During her studies, she was a répétiteur in lessons with KS Prof. Roman Trekel, Prof. Anna Korondi, KS Prof. Ewa Wolak, Prof. Martin Bruns and Prof. Christine Schäfer, as well as a répétiteur in masterclasses with KS Brigitte Fassbaender and KS Prof. Thomas Quasthoff. She has also worked as a répétiteur for scenic instruction at the Immling Festival, the Darmstadt Theatre and the Erfurt Theatre. In the 2024/25 season, she will work as a répétiteur at IMMMERMEEEHR at the Deutsche Oper Berlin.