Banquet

A music theatre ritual

15
Sunday
October
20:00 - 21:00
€ 20,00 / concs.* € 10,00
Free choice of seats
Information about the work

approx. 1 hour 20 minutes / no interval

In German and English

recommended from 16 years
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15
Sunday
October
20:00 - 21:00
€ 20,00 / concs.* € 10,00
Free choice of seats
the content

Banquets were an integral part of social and political practice in ancient Greece. In a strictly defined ritualised sequence that included ritual acts, music, dance and speeches, the participants - exclusively men - indulged in intoxication over the course of the evening. Plato's "Symposion" reports on the course of a banquet held in honour of the god Eros, in which various concepts and views of love were presented and discussed by the participants.

Based on Plato's writing, BANQUET attempts a reinterpretation of this social practice and the issues discussed in it. In a feminist ritual, we want to create communal utopias through singing, dancing, drinking and discussing together and proclaim a new age of love.

"I love you to bits" is just one of many proverbs that equates love with the act of taking possession of the other. A glance at the opera repertoire also reveals that this unconditional notion of love can often only be redeemed through the complete appropriation of the other or one's own annihilation. We want to approach these notions of love with a musical foray through opera and pop and, starting from there, look for new kinds of kinship that transcend anthropocentric ways of thinking. BANQUET is an invitation to collective intoxication and a musical journey from baroque arias to Wagner and today's club sound.

Please note: Drinks will be served free of charge during the performance; there is a choice of non-alcoholic and alcoholic options.

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Newsletter

10
DEC

Adventsverlosung: Das 10. Fensterchen

Before Tobias Kratzer's third production of INTERMEZZO premieres on our stage in April 2024, you can win his debut production for your home DVD collection in today's Advent calendar: Alexander von Zemlinsky's DER ZWERG.

In today's Advent calendar window, we are giving away two DVDs of the Naxos recording of Alexander von Zemlinsky's opera DER ZWERG, which was nominated for the GRAMMY in the "Best Opera Recording" category and is one of the most successful new DVD productions of recent years. If you would like to take part in the prize draw, please send an e-mail today to advent@deutscheoperberlin.de with the subject line "The 10th window".

A vain, superficial princess - a dwarf artist: the protagonists could hardly be more different, but the story only becomes a tragedy when the dwarf, unaware of his appearance, misinterprets the mockery of court society as a sign of honour and the princess's coquetry as proof of love. When he finally recognises himself in the mirror, he cannot escape the glances of the others - and collapses dead. This fairy tale about an outsider has had biographical parallels in mind since its premiere: Zemlinsky was small and rather slight in stature and suffered from his brief but passionate affair with Alma Schindler for the rest of his life. A quarter of a century of trauma management passed between the liaison in Vienna and the first performance in Cologne, during which the once renowned artist gradually found himself sidelined: too avant-garde for the traditionalists, too traditional for the avant-garde ... Experience David Butt Philip, Mick Morris Mehnert, Elena Tsallagova and Emily Magee in the main roles under the musical direction of Sir Donald Runnicles in a production by Tobias Kratzer.

We would like to thank the Naxos label for the great collaboration of recent years, which - in addition to Zemlinsky's DER ZWERG - has documented recordings of DAS WUNDER DER HELIANE, FRANCESCA DA RIMINI, DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN, DER SCHATZGRÄBER and DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG, as well as ARABELLA and ANTIKRIST in the course of 2024.

Closing date: 10 December 2023, the winners will be informed by email on 11 December 2023. The DVDs will then be sent by post. Legal recourse is excluded.