Dramatic advisor Carolin Müller-Dohle explains the link between global warming and a 100-year-old opera house

We are the apocalypse

ANTIKRIST was the first brand-new production that we were forced to cancel because of a Covid lockdown. 18 months on, the end-of-days opera is more topical than ever. Not good news at all

Suddenly, the end was not nigh; the end had actually arrived. »A world in spasm: Bloody lies: Death knells: Perdition game« are the words used in Scene 3 of Rued Langgaard’s opera ANTIKRIST, which is set in a kind of terrestrial end times. Director Ersan Mondtag and conductor Stephan Zilias spent a little over four weeks rehearsing the extraordinary work with singers and orchestra before the pandemic brought everything crashing down. On 12th March, just before the big rehearsal with piano was due to take place, we had to down tools. Artists and Deutsche Oper Berlin staff went off in all directions or began working from home. Ironically, the first production to be knobbled and pushed back by the pandemic was an opera about the demise of the planet.

Langgaard referred to the work as a »church opera«. The symbolistic, allusive lyrics are based closely on the last book of the New Testament, the Gospel according to John. In it, the world is beset by pest, famine and calamity, leading to all people being subjected to the Last Judgement of Christ.

Few critics at the time of the opera’s appearance knew what to make of Langgaard’s theme, to say nothing of his exuberant, eccentric music. ANTIKRIST was rejected twice by the Royal Opera in Copenhagen, once on its completion in the early 1920s and a second time in 1930 following a root-and-branch reworking. This must have been a jolt for Langgaard, whose career had started promisingly: his first symphony had been performed by the Berlin Symphoniker in 1913. Then came World War One and suddenly Langgaard, whose music was becoming increasingly avant-garde, no longer fitted in. But in 1968 his scores came to the attention of György Ligeti, whereupon the famed composer lobbied to have the Scandinavian’s works staged – heralding a veritable Langgaard revival. When ANTIKRIST eventually received its world premiere in Innsbruck in 1999, Langgaard had been dead for fifty years, having spent his latter years in western Denmark playing music in churches.

Celebrated as a wunderkind, dismissed by the critics of his day, and rediscovered by György Ligeti: Danish composer Rued Langgaard [1893 – 1952] © The Royal Library Copenhagen
 

Langgaard’s opera is suffused with fin de siècle atmosphere and pessimism, warning of catastrophe and denouncing the vices of the modern age: egotism, arrogance, frivolity. Langgaard, though, is also an optimist, convinced of the transformative, transcendental power of art and the importance of music as a thread connecting people to the godhead. So it is that the world is freed of all evil and sorrow in the culminating chorus scene in ANTIKRIST.

And what of the present day? Here we are, floundering in real-world end times. Raging wildfires on the Mediterranean coast, flash floods in the west of Germany… The end of the world as we know it is not a thing of fiction; it is a very real scenario. If carbon emissions are not slashed over the next ten years, average temperatures are set to rise before 2100 by up to four degrees compared to temperatures in the pre-industrial age. The worldwide consequences of this trend have been plain for years – and they are getting very close to home.

Those of us who can visualise the apocalypse are at an advantage, according to historian Johannes Fried in his book entitled »Dies irae: Eine Geschichte des Weltuntergangs« In Fried’s estimation, the apocalypse is the mother of invention and has given rise to all the science of the modern day. No religious belief system imagines the end of the world in more detail than Christianity. Regardless of one’s creed, visions of the apocalypse continue to inform our thoughts, our plans, our deeds. To that extent, then, the end of times also contains the seeds of a rebirth. Are we on the cusp of a Damascene realisation that will usher in an ecological new beginning? Langgaard, too, wove a measure of hope into his ANTIKRIST, serving notice that we should act now, if we want to bequeath a world worth living in to the next generations. This thought makes this opera more topical and relevant than it has ever been – so our delayed production has not come a moment too early!

Newsletter

News about the schedule
and the start of advance booking
Personal recommendations
Special offers ...
Stay well informed!

Subscribe to our newsletter

Subscribe to our Newsletter and receive 25% off your next ticket purchase.

* Mandatory field





Newsletter

04
DEC

Adventskalender im Foyer: Das 4. Fensterchen

African American Spirituals
with Christian Simmons and John Parr
5.00 p.m. / Rang-Foyer right
Duration: approx. 25 minutes / admission free


In Germany, it is still little known today that, parallel to the development of the European song, the spiritual in the USA looks back on a tradition that goes back to the 17th century. Created during the oppression of slavery as songs of labour, freedom, play, lamentation, celebration or lullabies, African-American spirituals form the starting point for gospel, blues and ultimately also for jazz, R&B and African-American music in general. Spirituals are characterised by their rhythmic finesse, which includes counter-rhythms, polyrhythms and syncopation. The tonality is characterised by microtonality, pentatonic scales and the varied use of the singing voice. All these elements suggest that the influences of African music, as brought to America by slaves, have survived over the centuries, mostly passed down orally, to this day.


The bass-baritone Christian Simmons, originally from Washington D.C., was a member of the Cafritz Young Artists of the Washington National Opera in the 2022/23 season and joined the ensemble of the Deutsche Oper Berlin as a scholarship holder of the Opera Foundation New York in the 2023/24 season. Over the course of the season, he will appear in roles such as Lord Rochefort / ANNA BOLENA, 2nd Harnischter / DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE, Pinellino / GIANNI SCHICCHI, Brabantischer Edler / LOHENGRIN, Oberpriester des Baal / NABUCCO and Sciarrone / TOSCA. Simmons is the district winner of the Metropolitan Opera's 2022/23 Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition, winner of the 2017 Harlem Opera Theater Vocal Competition, winner of the 2016 National Association of Teaching Singing (NATS) Regional Competition, and an Honorary Life Member of the Coalition for African Americans in the Performing Arts (CAAPA). A graduate of Morgan State University and the Maryland Opera Studio, Simmons is a member of the nation's first and largest music fraternity, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity of America.

John Parr was born in Birmingham in 1955 and studied at Manchester University and at the Royal Northern College of Music with Sulamita Aronovsky. He won prizes as a solo pianist at international competitions in Barcelona and Vercelli and was a member of Yehudi Menuhin's "Live Music Now". From 1985 to 1988 he was a guest repetiteur at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and worked for the Scottish Opera in Glasgow from 1989 to 1991. He came to Germany in 1991 and was Head of Studies and Musical Assistant to the General Music Director in Hanover. In 2000, Pamela Rosenberg and Donald Runnicles brought him to San Francisco Opera as Head of Music Staff. From 2002 to 2005, he was musical assistant at the Bayreuth Festival. From 2011 to 2014, he was casting director and assistant to the general music director at the Staatstheater Karlsruhe. Since August 2014, John Parr has been working at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, initially as Head of Studies and since 2018 as Head Coach.