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immmermeeehr

Gordon Kampe [*1976]

10
Tuesday
December
10:30 - 11:40
€ 25.00 / reduced € 10.00
Free choice of seats
Information about the work

Music theatre for, by and with children
Composition by Gordon Kampe on a text by Maria Milisavljević
World premiere on 16 November 2024 in the Tischlerei of the Deutsche Oper Berlin

70 mins / no interval

In German with German surtitles

recommended from 8 years
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Cast
Dates & Tickets
Our thanks to our partners

Kindly supported by Förderkreis der Deutschen Oper Berlin e. V. The children's chorus is supported by Dobolino e. V.

10
Tuesday
December
10:30 - 11:40
€ 25.00 / reduced € 10.00
Free choice of seats
Cast
the content

The stress sets in on the way to school. You’re too late, nobody wants to sit next to you, other students make fun of you and you’re bullied for the clothes you wear. Your grades are poor, your teachers are unfair, you’re worried because your parents are unemployed – or you struggle with memories of war and having to flee from your home, and these memories are still stuck with you.

The planned premiere of IMMMERMEEEHR, by composer Gordon Kampe and librettist Maria Milisavljević, is a piece of musical theatre for children of 8 years of age and older. The main roles are filled by the children’s chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, as well as five soloists from the children’s chorus. The remaining roles are held by four adult soloists and seven musicians. With this premiere, the Deutsche Oper Berlin seeks to follow up on its successful work in the Tischlerei creating a musical theatre repertoire for children and adolescents. However, the goal is also to create something entirely new: A piece in which children are singing and performing on stage for an audience of their own age, addressing topics that were developed in a participative process with director Franziska Seeberg – all as a professional, contemporary musical theatre production. This has all been planned with children of the children’s chorusand a sixth-year class from the Brüder-Grimm-Grundschule in Berlin-Wedding. The children were instructed to write short stories and scenes about their own personal worries, issues and problems, while thinking about possible solutions. Even in the preparatory research phase, the students covered a broad range of topics, from pressure to achieve and experiences of exclusion in school to the traumas of flight and displacement. This material serves as the foundation for a through-composed piece of musical theatre scored by renowned composer Gordon Kampe. The production is geared toward everyone 8 years of age and older, and is to be as accessible as possible, such as via special services for persons with visual or hearing impairments.

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22
DEC

Advents-Verlosung: Das 22. Fensterchen

On 7 March 2025, the first part of Tobias Kratzer's Strauss trilogy, ARABELLA, celebrates its revival as part of our ‘Richard Strauss in March’ weeks, with Jennifer Davis as Arabella , Heidi Stober as Zdenka/Zdenko, Thomas Johannes Mayer as Mandryka, Daniel O'Hearn as Matteo and, as in the premiere series, Doris Soffel and Albert Pesendorfer as the Waldner couple. Today we are giving away our DVD, which will not be available in shops until 14 February 2025. We would like to express our heartfelt thanks to NAXOS for giving us the very special opportunity to put ARABELLA in our lottery pot for you almost eight weeks before the official sales launch.

In today's Advent Calendar window, we are giving away two DVDs of ARABELLA – a lyrical comedy in three acts by Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. If you would like to win one of the two DVDs, please write an e-mail with the subject ‘The 22nd window’ to advent@deutscheoperberlin.de.

Vienna, circa 1860. The financially strapped Count Waldner is lodging with his family in a Viennese hotel. His only path to solvency is for him to secure an advantageous marriage for one of his two daughters – and the family can only afford to present Arabella, the eldest, in the upper circles of society. To conceal the family’s indigence, the parents have raised Zdenka as a boy, dressing her accordingly. Arabella is not short of suitors but has resolved to wait for ‘Mr Right’. When Mandryka, an aristocrat from a distant region, arrives, he and Arabella are instantly smitten. Arabella only asks to be able to bid farewell to her friends and suitors at the Fasching ball that evening. At the ball, Arabella says goodbye to her admirers. There is also the young officer Matteo, with whom Zdenka is secretly in love and with whom she has formed a friendship under the guise of her disguise as a boy. Matteo, however, desires Arabella and is distraught when he realises the hopelessness of his love. Zdenka devises a plan: she fakes a letter from Arabella in which she promises Matteo a night of love together. But instead she wants to wait for him herself in the darkness of the hotel room. Mandryka learns of Arabella's alleged infidelity and goes to the hotel with the ball guests to surprise Arabella in flagrante delicto. Arabella, innocent of this, is initially shocked and saddened by Mandryka’s suspicions but forgives him when the mix-up is revealed for what it is. The two agree to marry, as do Zdenka and Matteo.

Richard Strauss’s orchestral richness and opulence coupled with the period Viennese setting of the work led to ARABELLA being falsely pigeonholed as a light-hearted comedy of errors from its 1933 premiere onwards. In the estimation of Tobias Kratzer, however, who triumphed at the Deutsche Oper with his production of Alexander von Zemlinsky’s THE DWARF, this final collaboration between Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal marks a collision of two world views: the traditional roles of men and women on the one hand – as expressed in Arabella’s famous solo “Und du sollst mein Gebieter sein” – and a modern idea of social interaction on the other – as illustrated by Zdenka with her questioning of gender-based identities. Here, Kratzer turns the spotlight on this disunity between the various character portrayals in ARABELLA and explores these role-specific tensions on a continuum stretching from 19th-century Vienna to the present day. In the category of stage design, Manuel Braun, Jonas Dahl and Rainer Sellmaier were honoured with the renowned German Theatre Award DER FAUST 2023 for this production.

In this recording, under the baton of Sir Donald Runnicles, you will experience Albert Pesendorfer, Doris Soffel, Sara Jakubiak, Elena Tsallagova, Russell Braun, Robert Watson, Thomas Blondelle, Kyle Miller, Tyler Zimmerman, Hye-Young Moon, Lexi Hutton, Jörg Schörner and others, as well as the chorus and orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. The performances on 18 and 23 March 2023 were recorded by rbb Kultur and Naxos for this DVD.

We would like to thank the Naxos label for the great collaboration over the past few years, which documents recordings of DER ZWERG, DAS WUNDER DER HELIANE, FRANCESCA DA RIMINI, DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN, DER SCHATZGRÄBER, DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG and ANTIKRIST. Richard Strauss' ARABELLA and INTERMEZZO will be released in the course of 2025.


Closing date: 22 December 2024. The winners will be informed by email on 23 December 2024. The DVDs will then be sent by post. There is no right of appeal.