The Snow Queen

Samuel Penderbayne (*1989)

Information on the piece

Musical theatre based on Hans Christian Andersen by Samuel Penderbayne
Libretto by Christian Schönfelder
First performed on 22 November 2019, at the Tischlerei (studio) of Deutsche Oper Berlin

70 mins / no interval

In German language without surtitles

recommended from 8 years
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Kindly supported by Förderkreis der Deutschen Oper Berlin e. V. A cooperation with OperaLab Berlin

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About the performance

Gerda and Kay are best friends. Yet when Kay gets a splinter in his eye, everything changes in an instant. He finds Gerda and his other friends childish, plain and silly, and follows the enticing voice of the icily beautiful Snow Queen. Now Gerda sets off, and while she searches for Kay she finds herself: in the eerily beautiful realm of the Flower Queen, the humdrum golden court of the Princess, the dangerous and dark cave of the Robber Queen, she learns to stand up for herself and her friends. With help from the Crow and the Reindeer she finally finds the way to the cold north of Lapland, and is able to free Kay from the Snow Queen's clutches with the true power of friendship – laughter.

Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales have been integral to children's bedrooms for generations, inspiring authors and composers alike. Now the Tischlerei at the Deutsche Oper Berlin will turn into the icy cold world of the Snow Queen in December and January. Composer Samuel Penderbayne, librettist Christian Schönfelder and director Brigitte Dethier are going on Gerda's journey with one actress, three singers and five musicians. With humour and awe they will tell a road-trip movie together: musical flowers, a croaking clarinet, a tuba reindeer and the eerily beautiful synthesiser world of the Snow Queen are just a few ingredients in this musical theatre in which the children experience the story up close.

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Newsletter

02
DEC

Advents-Verlosung: Das 2. Fensterchen

In today's Advent calendar window, we are giving away 3 DVDs of "Der Schatzgräber" - an opera in a prelude, four acts and a postlude by Franz Schreker. If you would like to win one of the three DVDs, please send an e-mail today with the subject "The 2nd window" to advent@deutscheoperberlin.de.

DER SCHATZGRÄBER (THE TREASURE HUNTER) by Franz Schreker was a triumph at its world premiere in Frankfurt in 1920 and went on to play 44 times at assorted venues over the next five years. It then fell victim to a shifting zeitgeist and slipped from opera-house programmes, with a National Socialist ban on performances sealing its demise. Even after 1945 the Schreker revival was a long time coming – and THE TREASURE HUNTER has not featured prominently in the renaissance.

As with the vast majority of Schreker’s libretti, the story of Els and Elis explores the relationship between fantasy and reality, between art and life. Soulmates in the sense that they are both at the mercy of the king’s disposition, Els and Elis set off in search of different treasures. Elis, the minstrel, uses his magic lute to locate a stash of jewels and do humanity a good turn. Els, an innkeeper’s daughter who has grown up motherless in a tough, male-chauvinist world, becomes a liar, cheat and murderess in pursuit of her goal, tasking her suitors to steal the queen’s jewels and then having them killed once they have returned with the haul of treasure. Yet even with the gold in their possession, the pair are not content, and so, true to form, Schreker turns his attention to the theme of yearning per se, which is the actual “treasure” that the composer is interested in, “a dream of happiness and redemption”. Elis and Els are caught up in a swirl of dreams, memories, premonitions, songs and music. Their stories take on a dreamlike quality in a world beset by greed, murder and emotional inconstancy. For Franz Schreker the path to redemption could only be via art. Composed during the turmoil of the First World War, the TREASURE HUNTER score amounts to Schreker’s personal confession of artistic faith, executed in florid strokes of late-Romantic musical colour.

Conductor Marc Albrecht; Staging Christof Loy; Set design Johannes Leiacker; Costume design Barbara Drosihn; With Tuomas Pursio, Doke Pauwels, Clemens Bieber, Michael Adams, Joel Allison, Michael Laurenz, Thomas Johannes Mayer, Seth Carico, Daniel Johansson, Gideon Poppe, Stephen Bronk, Elisabet Strid, Patrick Cook, Tyler Zimmerman a. o.; Chorus and Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin


Closing date: 2 December 2023, the winners will be informed by email on 4 December 2023. The DVDs will then be sent by post. Legal recourse is excluded.