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Schedule - Deutsche Oper Berlin

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Written on Skin

George Benjamin [*1960]

04
Sunday
May
17:00 - 18:30
B prices: € 92.00 / 72.00 / 52.00 / 32.00 / 24.00
Buy tickets
Information about the work

Opera in three parts
Text by Martin Crimp after the anonymous Occitan text "Guillem de Cabestanh - Le cœur mangé" from the 13th century.
Premiere on 7 July 2012 at the Grand Théâtre de Provence in Aix-en-Provence
Premiere at the Deutsche Oper Berlin on 27 January 2024

1 hour 30 minutes / No interval

In English with German and English surtitles

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

recommended from 16 years
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Cast
04
Sunday
May
17:00 - 18:30
B prices: € 92.00 / 72.00 / 52.00 / 32.00 / 24.00
Buy tickets
Cast
the content

About the work
Three angels look back to a period in the past when books were precious artefacts with texts written on skin. One of the angels acts out the role of an olden-day illustrator who has been commissioned by the rich and powerful Protector to create a beautifully illuminated manuscript setting out the Protector’s biography. In his patron’s home the angel encounters Agnès, the Protector’s younger wife, who is still a virgin on account of her husband’s self-imposed abstinence. Despite this, he is jealous and keeps a close eye on her – to no avail, because Agnès begins an affair with the angel in his incarnation as an artist. The Protector learns of their relationship and kills the illustrator. Then he serves his unwitting wife the heart of her lover as part of a meal.

For the composer of WRITTEN ON SKIN, George Benjamin, English author Martin Crimp adapted one of the best-known stories from the France of the High Middle Ages. “Le cœur mangé”, the tale of a woman eating the heart of her lover, can be traced to a 12-century Occitan text reputedly written by a troubadour named Guillem de Cabestanh, although some sources suggest he came to the same gruesome end. Crimp’s text charting the gory ménage à trois is also a rumination on the power of art. Agnès is in awe of the illustrator’s talent for chronicling real events by means of images and even creating entire worlds from scratch. Yet it is the pictures, coupled with a declaration of love to Agnès in text form, that alert the Protector to his affair with his wife.


About the production
The world premiere of WRITTEN ON SKIN took place at the 2012 Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and was rapturously received. The work is a rare example of perfect text-composition symbiosis. A gripping story and precise, poetic language go hand-in-hand with an acutely theatrical score which, albeit thoroughly contemporary, also has the kind of full-bodied tonality that can rivet a broad range of audiences. Katie Mitchell’s visually powerful and psychologically accurate production has toured widely on the international circuit and now comes to Berlin for the first time.

Our articles on the subject

A momentous affair
George Benjamin – My place of serenity: A garden in London
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21
DEC

Advents-Verlosung: Das 21. Fensterchen

On 12 April 2025, we will celebrate the revival of DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG in the production by Jossi Wieler, Sergio Morabito and Anna Viebrock, with Thomas Johannes Mayer as Hans Sachs, Elena Tsallagova as Eva, Magnus Vigilius as Walther von Stolzing and Chance Jonas-O'Toole as David, as part of our ‘Richard Wagner in April’ weeks. But today, we are giving away our DVD, which was recorded in collaboration with the NAXOS label in the premiere series in early summer 2022.

In today's Advent calendar window, we are giving away 2 DVDs of DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG – Opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. If you would like to win one of the two DVDs, please write an e-mail with the subject ‘The 21st window’ to advent@deutscheoperberlin.de.

More popular than almost any other stage work by Richard Wagner, DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG is loved and hated at the same time. The play combines a light-hearted comedy plot with a summer night's drunken play about the delusion and reality of love, but at the same time claims to be a founding manifesto of German national art and is therefore more historically charged in its reception than almost any other work by Richard Wagner. At the same time, however, DIE MEISTERSINGER is first and foremost a piece about music and music-making.

Telling the story of DIE MEISTERSINGER in a world dedicated to music is also the starting point for the directorial concept of Jossi Wieler, Anna Viebrock and Sergio Morabito. In it, they tell of the rules and rigid dogmas that govern this world and which thus become an example for numerous contexts in which people set rules, subordinate themselves and find refuge in them or want to break out and escape. They bring a play to the stage in which singers also play singers in order to tell a story about singing. And they show characters such as Hans Sachs, an ageing man who renounces his love for Eva in favour of a younger man and at the same time wants to reform the system, but does not shy away from demagoguery and populism - while the breath of history occasionally blows in the ghosts of the Meistersinger past.

Conductor John Fiore; Staging Jossi Wieler, Anna Viebrock, Sergio Morabito; With Johan Reuter, Albert Pesendorfer, Gideon Poppe, Simon Pauly, Philipp Jekal, Thomas Lehman, Jörg Schörner, Clemens Bieber, Burkhard Ulrich, Stephen Bronk, Tobias Kehrer, Byung Gil Kim, Klaus Florian Vogt, Ya-Chung Huang, Heidi Stober, Annika Schlicht a. o.; Chorus and Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin



Closing date: 21 December 2024, the winners will be informed by email on 23 December 2024. The DVDs will then be sent by post. Legal recourse is excluded.