Newsletter

News about the schedule 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

Schedule - Deutsche Oper Berlin

Skip Media Container

Macbeth

Giuseppe Verdi [1813 – 1901]

Information on the piece

Opera in four acts
Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave and Andrea Maffei,
based on a tragedy by William Shakespeare
First performed on 14th March 1847 in Florence (1st version),
21st April 1865 in Paris (2nd version)
Premiere at the Deutsche Oper Berlin on 23 November 2024

3 hrs 20 mins / 1 interval

In Italian language with German and English surtitles

Introduction: 45 minutes before the start of the performance in the Rank foyer on the right

recommended from 15 years
Share this post
Cast
Our thanks to our partners

With the support of the Förderkreis der Deutschen Oper Berlin e. V. Presented by radio3 and taz.

Cast
About the performance

About the work
MACBETH was the first of Shakespeare’s plays to be set to music by Verdi, in 1847. Despite his decades of interest in the English playwright, he did not adapt another work of Shakespeare’s until late in his career. Verdi’s operatic rendition of this tale of murky prophecies and bloody struggles for the throne of Scotland came in the hugely productive decade that Verdi himself came to refer to as his »galley slave years«. Still striving for critical recognition, he turned out a string of operas that expanded on the bel canto genre. MACBETH was part of an evolution in Italian opera, a development that was even more evident in the modified version released in 1865. In typical fashion Verdi roughened up the storyline and injected some emotional twists and turns, intensifying the drama in the process and creating a tense momentum that sends the protagonists hurtling towards their respective gruesome ends.

About the production
Following on from her triumphs with BABY DOLL and NEGAR in the Tischlerei of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and her recent productions at the Bayerische Staatsoper, the Semperoper Dresden, the MusikTheater an der Wien and La Monnaie in Brüssel, Marie-Ève Signeyrole returns to the venue on Bismarckstrasse for her first staging of a new production on the main stage. Verdi’s hard-hitting Shakespearean tragedy provides the perfect material for the arresting visuals that are a hallmark of the French director, whose aesthetic vision can hold its own with any modern cinematic blockbuster.

Our articles on the subject

The Realist
Seven questions for ... Roman Burdenko
Macbeth – Synopsis

Our recommendations

Nabucco
Don Carlo
La traviata
Rigoletto
Les Vêpres Siciliennes
Enter Onepager
1

slide_title_1

slide_description_1

slide_headline_2
2

slide_title_2

slide_description_2

slide_headline_3
3

slide_title_3

slide_description_3

slide_headline_4
4

slide_title_4

slide_description_4

Create / edit OnePager
15
DEC

Advents-Verlosung: Das 15. Fensterchen

For almost two decades, the two creative minds behind our big band – Sebastian ‘Sese’ Krol and Rüdiger ‘Rübe’ Ruppert – have been curating brilliant evenings of jazz: a radiant highlight of this work took place on 19 September 2022, when Charles Mingus' “Epitaph” was performed in the sold-out Philharmonie. This concert was a tribute to Mingus' 100th birthday and was a sensation, which is now available as a CD on the EuroArts label. We are giving away this CD in today's Advent window.

Win one of two CDs of Charles Mingus' “Epitaph”, recorded live at the Philharmonie. If you want to be one of the winners, send an e-mail to advent@deutscheoperberlin.de today with the subject “The 15th little window”.

Charles Mingus caused a sensation in 1959 with his album ‘Ah Um’, which catapulted him into the pantheon of jazz. Immediately afterwards, he devoted himself to an even bolder vision: a suite for orchestra, part improvised, part composed – written for an ensemble of two complete big bands plus additional orchestral instruments. It was to be a work of the ‘third way’, combining jazz with the classical modernism of a Bartók and Stravinsky, but at the same time his personal opus summum. We are talking about ‘Epitaph’. In Berlin in 2022, conductor Titus Engel brought it to the stage: together with Charles Mingus' companion Randy Brecker, with musicians from the BigBand and the orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Jazz Institute Berlin.

Charles Mingus himself never heard the full version of ‘Epitaph’. That's because the 1962 premiere was a fiasco, perhaps the biggest in jazz history. It happened at the Town Hall in New York: everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Mingus wrote highly complex music, but had only scheduled three rehearsals. Trombonist Jimmy Knepper became a copyist, transcribing sheet music that Mingus produced every day. There was no end to it, he kept changing, adding to and expanding the music. Knepper couldn't keep up. Mingus became bad-tempered, then angry, then hated the world. The pressure was on: the record company wanted to record live – extremely unusual at the time. Eventually the concert took place, the sheet music wasn't ready, the tension between the musicians was unmistakable, and the audience didn't like the badly played music. The concert ended in a police intervention. The second part was never played. Mingus died in 1979 without ever having heard his major work. The 500 pages of sheet music were discovered years later in an old suitcase belonging to his widow Sue.

‘The music is very varied, very dense, powerful, a unique work between genres,’ says Titus Engel in 2022. The conductor of this CD recording is – like Mingus – equally at home in the worlds of classical, new and jazz music, and he plays double bass like the master. And so the rarely heard work was brought to new life in this concert by the BigBand of the Deutsche Oper Berlin: Not only was there sufficient rehearsal time for the concert in Berlin and the atmosphere between the musicians was enthusiastic, but the sheet music was also newly created based on the critical new edition.

Listen to Charles Mingus' “Epitaph” conducted by Titus Engel with musicians from the BigBand and the orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Jazz Institute Berlin, with Jorge Puerta (speaker / tenor) and Randy Brecker (trumpet). The CD was released on the EuroArts label.



Closing date: 15 December 2024. The winners will be informed by email on 16 December 2024. The CDs will be sent by post. The judges' decision is final.