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    Aribert Reimann, Masterful German Opera Composer, Is Dead at 88

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    His works, which were radically individual, were among the most celebrated of the late 20th and early 21st century.Aribert Reimann, whose powerful operas based on works by Shakespeare, Kafka, Lorca and others made him one of the most significant opera composers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, died on Wednesday in Berlin. He was 88.His publisher, Schott Music, announced the death.A prolific composer with widely performed works, particularly his operas and songs, Mr. Reimann (pronounced RYE-mahn) was revered for his ability to fuse complex and often challenging modern music with lyrical texts. His works were frequently devastating in their emotional impact, sounding like organic expressions of the human voice.“Like few other composers of his generation, Reimann knew how to tell stories in his operas which directly affected us humans living in the 21st century,” Dietmar Schwarz, the manager of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, said in a statement.Mr. Reimann enjoyed a close relationship with the opera house. Five of his stage works were performed there, most recently his ninth and final completed opera, “L’Invisible,” which was based on texts by the Belgian Symbolist Maurice Maeterlinck and premiered in 2017.Another stage work, based on Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” was planned for 2025 but was unfinished.A performance of Mr. Reimann’s ninth and final opera, “L’Invisible,” at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 2017. Five of his works were performed at the theater.Lieberenz/Ullstein Bild, via Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      René Pollesch, Provocative Force in German Theater, Dies at 61

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      His avant-garde work, short on character and plot but long on verbal high jinks, could be irreverent, even goofy, but it was always intellectually serious.René Pollesch, a prolific playwright and stage director whose work — intellectually serious yet irreverent, chatty, goofy and riddled with pop culture references — made him one of the most significant forces in German theater of the past three decades, died on Monday in Berlin. He was 61.His death was announced by the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz theater, where he had been artistic director since 2021. No cause was given.Mr. Pollesch (pronounced POL-esh) wrote roughly 200 plays and directed virtually all of them himself, often at leading theaters in the German-speaking world. But while his plays lit up stages in places like Stuttgart, Hamburg, Vienna and Zurich, he was most closely associated with the Volksbühne, a publicly funded playhouse in what once was East Berlin, that had a reputation for daring and provocative theatermaking.Mr. Pollesch took over leadership of the theater after years of managerial turmoil set off by the dismissal of the company’s longtime artistic director, Frank Castorf, in 2017. When Mr. Pollesch arrived, two others in the top post had come and gone, and the theater was craving stability.In his two and a half seasons at the helm, he staged nine original plays, eight of which remain in the theater’s repertoire. The most recent, “ja nichts ist okay” (“yes nothing is okay”) premiered on Feb. 11.A scene from “ja nichts ist ok” (“yes nothing is okay”), the most recent play staged by Mr. Pollesch at the Volksbühne. It had its premiere on Feb. 11. Thomas Aurin, via Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-PlatzWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Criticism of Israel at Berlin Film Festival Stirs Antisemitism Debate

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      The backlash to some winners’ speeches at the festival shows how polarized and fraught Germany’s culture scene has become.When Yuval Abraham and Basel Adra walked onstage at the Berlin International Film Festival on Saturday night, they had come to talk about more than movies.Abraham and Adra, an Israeli and Palestinian filmmaking team, had just won the festival’s award for best documentary for “No Other Land,” a movie about Palestinian resistance to Israeli campaigns in the occupied territories. It was “very hard,” Adra said, to celebrate the award “when there are tens of thousands of my people being slaughtered and massacred by Israel in Gaza.”He called upon German lawmakers to “stop sending weapons to Israel,” before Abraham called for a cease-fire and an end to Israel’s occupation.The audience, which included the culture minister of Germany, Claudia Roth, applauded loudly, and there were whistles and cheers in the hall.In the days since, Abraham and Adra’s speeches have become the latest flashpoint in a long-running debate in Germany around whether public statements by filmmakers, musicians and other artists should be described as antisemitic if they don’t line up with Germany’s official stance on Israel.Scores of German journalists and politicians have denounced the speeches. On Sunday, Kai Wegner, the mayor of Berlin, said in posts on X that the filmmakers’ statements were filled with “intolerable relativization,” because they left out any mention of Hamas.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Film Festival in the Back of a Taxi

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      The TaxiFilmFest is partly a protest over the miserable state of Berlin’s taxi industry. But it’s also a celebration of the cab’s iconic place in the urban cultural landscape.Some of international cinema’s biggest names gathered on Tuesday night at the Berlin International Film Festival as the event honored Martin Scorsese with a lifetime achievement award. Before accepting his trophy, Scorsese listened as the German director Wim Wenders gave a laudatory speech to an audience including celebrities and local dignitaries.Just around the corner, parked in the middle of a busy thoroughfare, a group of Berlin’s taxi drivers crammed into the back of a worn-out taxi van to watch a double-feature capped by Scorsese’s 1976 movie “Taxi Driver.”Klaus Meier, who has been driving a cab in Berlin since 1985, handed out bottles of soda and beer, popping the caps with the blade of a pocketknife. Irene Jaxtheimer, who runs a taxi company, passed around homemade popcorn. A generator outside the cab powered a modest television, a DVD player and a small electric heater.The unconventional screening, just outside a centerpiece event for one of Europe’s most prestigious film festivals, was part of the makeshift TaxiFilmFest. Running through Sunday, it is partly a protest over the miserable state of the taxi industry these days and partly a counterfestival to celebrate the taxi cab’s iconic place in the urban cultural landscape.It’s also in objection to an exclusive partnership deal between the festival, known locally as the Berlinale, and the ride-hailing giant Uber to ferry filmmakers between the city’s movie theaters during the event. The deep-pocketed Silicon Valley company has drawn the ire of traditional cabdrivers the world over, and the protesters who packed in for the TaxiFilmFest screenings were railing against what they see as a too lightly regulated rival.Beeping horns from the busy street outside — some of them coming from sleek black Uber vehicles emblazoned with the Berlinale logo — blended with the street scenes from “Taxi Driver” playing on the tinny television speakers. “Ah, I really miss those mechanical fare boxes!” Meier said as the fares ticked away in the onscreen cab of the movie’s unhinged antihero, Travis Bickle, who drives around mid-’70s New York with growing hatred and menace.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Musical Performances to See in Europe This Winter

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      Concert halls and opera houses in Vienna, Berlin and beyond are offering fan favorites (“Die Fledermaus”) and surprises (an operatic “Animal Farm”).The winter opera and classical music season in Central and Eastern Europe balances holiday classics with rarities and even some fresh works. Opera houses and concert halls from Vienna to Berlin to Prague are presenting a varied program of old chestnuts and new discoveries. Here is a selection.Munich“Die Fledermaus,” Bayerische Staatsoper, through Jan. 10Barrie Kosky’s new production of Johann Strauss Jr.’s most popular operetta, “Die Fledermaus,” a New Year’s Eve favorite in much of Europe, is one of the most eagerly awaited events of the season here at the Bavarian State Opera. Mr. Kosky, an Australian director with a wide-ranging résumé — his recent successes include “Das Rheingold” in London and “Chicago” in Berlin — stages Strauss’s infectiously tuneful farce with energetic panache and a dash of camp. Vladimir Jurowski, the Munich company’s general music director, leads a spirited cast headed by the German star soprano Diana Damrau. The dynamic performances, carefully controlled chaos of Mr. Kosky’s staging, and a few unpredictable touches make this 150-year-old work seem fresher than ever. The Dec. 31 performance will also be streamed on the State Opera’s online platform. For the more traditionally inclined, the company is also bringing back August Everding’s sumptuous 1978 production of Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte” (through Saturday).Barrie Kosky’s staging of “The Golden Cockerel,” performed in Lyon, France. The Komische Oper in Berlin, where the production will play this winter, has a long history with Slavic repertoire.Jean Louis FernandezBerlin“The Golden Cockerel,” Komische Oper Berlin in the Schiller Theater, Jan. 28-March 20A new production of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Golden Cockerel” at the Komische Oper Berlin is the first premiere to be led by the company’s newly minted general music director, the American James Gaffigan. This riotous and surreal take on the fairy-tale opera by Mr. Kosky, who ran the Komische as artistic director from 2012 to 2022, has also graced stages in Aix-en-Provence and Lyon, France, and Adelaide, Australia. In Berlin, it becomes the company’s latest foray into Slavic repertoire after inventive and gripping productions of Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin,” Prokofiev’s “The Fiery Angel” and Shostakovich’s “The Nose.”“Rusalka,” Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Feb. 4-22Antonin Dvorak’s 1901 opera “Rusalka” hovers on the edge of the standard repertoire. The lyrical and soaring aria “Song to the Moon” is better known than the rest of this dark and symbolically rich adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid.” The Hungarian filmmaker Kornel Mundruczo directs the first new production of “Rusalka” at the Berlin Staatsoper in over half a century. The British maestro Robin Ticciati, music director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, conducts the lush and frequently melancholy score.Vienna“Animal Farm,” Wiener Staatsoper, Feb. 28-March 10The Russian composer Alexander Raskatov’s “Animal Farm” arrives at the Vienna State Opera in late February, in a production by the Italian director Damiano Michieletto. Reviewing the work’s world premiere in Amsterdam earlier this year, Shirley Apthorp, the Financial Times’s opera critic, praised Raskatov’s “violent, compelling sound-world, percussive and angular, full of unpleasant truths” in this operatic setting of Orwell’s famed allegory of the Russian Revolution. The British conductor Alexander Soddy leads the work’s Viennese premiere.Franz Welser-Möst and the Wiener Philharmoniker, Feb. 22-26In the first of five February concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic, Franz Welser-Möst, the former general music director of the Wiener Staatsoper and longtime leader of the Cleveland Orchestra, tackles Mahler’s towering and elegiac Ninth Symphony at the Wiener Konzerthaus. On subsequent programs, performed in the Musikverein, the Austrian maestro leads the Viennese in works by Ravel, Hindemith, Schoenberg, Berg, Bruckner and Richard Strauss.West Side Story, Volksoper Wien, Jan. 27-March 24In late January, music by Leonard Bernstein will resound through Vienna’s opera houses. Shortly after the American director Lydia Steier unveils her “Candide” at the MusikTheater an der Wien, a new “West Side Story” arrives at the Volksoper, the city’s traditional operetta and musical stage on the other side of town. (The house’s other productions this season include “Die Fledermaus” and “Aristocats.”) For the director Lotte de Beer’s rendition of the quintessential American boy-meets-girl musical, performed in a mix of German and English, the Puerto Rico-born, New York-raised choreographer Bryan Arias updates Jerome Robbins’s classic dance moves.“Katya Kabanova” at the National Theater in Prague, featuring, from left, Jaroslav Brezina, Eva Urbanova and Alzbeta Polackova. Zdeněk SokolPrague“Katya Kabanova,” The National Theater, March 22-27Leos Janacek’s searing 1921 opera about the emotional unraveling of an adulterous wife in 19th-century Russia returns to the National Theater in Prague in a production by the provocative Catalan director Calixto Bieito, who is famous for his unorthodox interpretations of classic operas. Jaroslav Kyzlink, a Janacek specialist, leads the psychologically raw score and Alzbeta Polackova, a much-loved soprano with the company, tackles the vocally and emotionally punishing title role.Bratislava, Slovakia“Hubicka (The Kiss),” Slovak National Theater, March 1-June 8In honor of the 200th anniversary of the great Czech composer Bedrich Smetana’s birth, the Slovak National Theater presents his 1876 opera “The Kiss.” Once among the composer’s most popular works, “The Kiss” has long been eclipsed by Smetana’s earlier comic opera “The Bartered Bride,” and is remembered mostly for its lilting lullaby. With Andrea Hlinkova’s new production, the Slovak National Theater, which, coincidentally, was opened in 1920 with a performance of “The Kiss,” hopes to change that.Budapest“Bartok DanceTriptych,” Hungarian State Opera, Feb. 1-24Three works by Hungary’s great modernist composer Bela Bartok comprise this new ballet, choreographed by a trio of creatives. Laszlo Velekei, the director of the Ballet Company of Gyor, in northwestern Hungary, tackles “The Wooden Prince,” a pantomime ballet (a work half-danced, half-mimed) that premiered at the Hungarian State Opera House in 1917. Bartok’s second (and last) ballet, “The Miraculous Mandarin,” caused a scandal when it was first performed in 1926 in Cologne, Germany, because it depicted a girl forced into prostitution in a seething modern metropolis. In her production, Marianna Venekei, a longtime member of the Hungarian State Opera, explores the psychology of the work’s motley crew of city dwellers. Rounding out the program is the “Dance Suite” (1923), originally a concert piece and here choreographed by Kristof Varnagy, whose varied résumé includes projects with classical ballet companies, contemporary dance troupes and even Cirque du Soleil. Writing about the short movements that make up the “Dance Suite,” Bartok said his aim was to “present some idealized peasant music.” More

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      ’Linie 1’ Captures the Soul of Berlin

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      “Linie 1” has been running since 1986 and just celebrated its 2,000th performance. Its cast of kooky dreamers and misfits still capture something special about Berlin.On April 30, 1986, “Linie 1” (“Line 1”), a rock musical set in Berlin’s subway, premiered at a 367-seat theater in what was then West Berlin. In a rave review of the show, the newspaper Der Tagesspiegel praised the show, about a small-town girl who arrives in Berlin in search of her rocker boyfriend, as both “cosmopolitan and exportable.”“The German musical has emancipated itself from its American role models in a clever, mature and very Berlin way,” the paper’s critic, Hellmut Kotschenreuther, wrote.“Linie 1,” which was written by Volker Ludwig, has remained a Berlin fixture ever since, and it regularly sells out at the GRIPS Theater, the independent playhouse where it has run for the last four decades and where, last week, the show celebrated its 2,000th performance.It’s not hard to see why “Linie 1” has been so well-loved and durable. Natalie, the show’s naïve protagonist, resembles Dorothy from the “Wizard of Oz.” But her Yellow Brick Road is the grimy U1 subway, or U-Bahn, line, which she rides back and forth between the districts of Charlottenburg and Kreuzberg.While searching for the Berlin musician who passed through her West German town and knocked her up, Nathalie meets drunks, prostitutes, drug addicts and other colorful characters in the big, bad city. There’s very little plot in this revue-like evening for 11 spirited performers. Many of them resemble quick-change artists as they fly in and out of Mascha Schubert’s fabulously retro costumes — neon tracksuits, jean jackets, leggings, nylon ski jackets — to inhabit the show’s 80 roles.The protagonist of “Linie 1,” Natalie (Helena Charlotte Sigal), has traveled to Berlin from her small town to look for her rocker boyfriend, Johnny.David Baltzer/BildbuehneThe performance that I attended a little over a month ago (number 1,994) was delayed by a half-hour because Dietrich Lehmann, who has been a cast member since the 1986 premiere, arrived late: He had forgotten he was performing that evening. While Lehmann got into costume, the audience grabbed beers and snacks at the bar. No one showed the slightest irritation at the delay.When the show finally got underway, the crowd was fired up, applauding their favorite sketches and characters, or singing along. (One singalong number simply lists the stops of the U1.) It was a level of audience involvement I haven’t experienced outside of “The Rocky Horror Show.”Birger Heymann’s score, performed by five musicians (billed as the “No Ticket” band) is infectious and very ‘80s, with prominent saxophone, synthesizer and drums. But some of the most upbeat numbers deal with urban alienation, missed connections, insecurity and loneliness. Even at their most rocking and tuneful, the songs are often laced with vulgarity and shot through with anger.One of the showstoppers is “Wilmersdorfer Witwen,” a beer-hall march sung by fur-clad widows (four men in drag) spending their pensions from their long-dead Nazi husbands at West Berlin’s signature department store, KaDeWe. They see themselves as the defenders of an older Berlin and lament the good old days before the city was invaded by Turks, communists and squatters.“With God and the press on our side / Our city will soon be wiped clean / Just like 50 years ago,” they sing in a grotesquely caustic cabaret number. (Dietrich, the actor who arrived late, played one of the Nazi widows, as well as a racist man and a homeless drunk.)According to the theater, over 600,000 people have seen “Linie 1” at the GRIPS. The show has toured in Dublin, Jerusalem and Mumbai (as well as a 1988 stop at the Pepsico Summerfare arts festival in Purchase, N.Y.), and local productions have popped up around the globe, often in translation: throughout Europe and in Canada, Brazil and South Korea, often in versions adapted for local audiences. According to the GRIPS, “Linie 1” has been seen by more than 3 million people worldwide.By some cosmic coincidence, a few days after the Berlin production of “Linie 1” surpassed the 2,000 performance mark, the city’s public transportation service, the B.V.G., premiered a musical of its very own. “Tarifzone Liebe” (“Fare Zone Love”), a glitzy, hourlong show played two performances at the Admiralspalast, a theater nearly five times larger than the GRIPS. (It was also livestreamed on YouTube.)In what has got to rank as one of the nuttiest P.R. stunts in recent memory, the B.V.G. commissioned “Tarifzone Liebe” to win the affection of locals, who love to complain about Berlin’s transit network. Interest in the show was sky-high, and tickets sold out fast. This approach to turning I.P. into art, or at least entertainment, is similar to the one Mattel took with Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster “Barbie”: create something witty and self-deprecating about your product to increase brand visibility.The musical was developed by the commercial music producer Not A Machine (and its composers Fabian Reifarth and Kolja Bustorf) and the result is a very slick, Broadway-style product that befits the promotional nature of the show but is bewilderingly at odds with the B.V.G.’s track record of dysfunction.“Tarifzone Liebe” (“Fare Zone Love”) is a P.R. stunt commissioned by Berlin’s transport authority to win the affection of locals.Isa Foltin/Getty Images for BVGThe polished production was a far cry from the endearing scrappiness of “Linie 1.” And whereas “Linie 1” does not shy away from serious themes, or from exploring Berlin’s dark side, “Tarifzone Liebe” was a spectacle-driven revue whose catchy yet generic songs were punctuated by short scenes featuring puns and word play that would make the creators of Broadway’s super-corny musical “Shucked” blush. It was also extremely sappy; at one point in “Tarifzone Liebe,” two characters croon about “A one-way ticket to love and happiness.”As fun and good-natured as it was, the show proved little, except that Berlin’s transportation authority has a great sense of humor about itself. “Tarifzone Liebe,” which features a subway, streetcar and bus as characters, ended up being a love letter to the B.V.G., rather than the city it serves.What’s remarkable about “Linie 1,” nearly 40 years after its premiere, is how much of the show’s depiction of Berlin still rings true. The city is no longer divided, punk is dead and there are few Nazi widows left, and yet the Berlin of “Linie 1” is still shockingly familiar. Although it is a time capsule is many ways, the musical still captures Berlin’s abrasive charm, and its kooky cast of dreamers and misfits remains recognizable.Like with the city itself, you are won over by the show’s rough-around-the-edges quality, its lack of sentimentality and its anything-goes ethos. Musical theater isn’t a genre associated with incisive urban and social commentary, but “Linie 1” feels like one of the very few musicals that channels the soul of a city. More

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      Review: ‘Chicago,’ With Nary a Finger Snap

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      Barrie Kosky’s Berlin production of the 1975 musical adds a touch of burlesque and a dash of Bertolt Brecht.The seedy, culturally vibrant and rapidly modernizing Berlin of the 1920s was nicknamed “Chicago on the Spree.” That moniker sprang to mind recently during the premiere of a masterful and muscular new production of “Chicago,” directed by Barrie Kosky at the Komische Oper Berlin.“Chicago,” a “story of greed, corruption, violence, exploitation, adultery and treachery,” to quote the prologue, is the longest-running show currently on Broadway, but it got a very mixed reception when it opened there in 1975. Many of those early audience members were uncomfortable with Fred Ebb, Bob Fosse and John Kander’s use of musical showstoppers in the service of an amoral satire, and the show’s jerky and pastiche-like narrative technique.For his production, Kosky has gone back to the original concept of the show as a musical vaudeville with a heavy dose of bile and a dash of Brechtian alienation, while also embracing burlesque elements. Michael Levine’s dazzling set is outfitted with nearly 7000 light bulbs, which intelligently frame the actors, and the action, in frequently changing configurations that suggest a nightclub, a prison cell and a circus ring.Many of the costumes in Kosky’s production give a nod to the musical’s roots in burlesque and vaudeville.Barbara BraunThere are definite echoes of Kosky’s darkly glittering take on “The Threepenny Opera” from 2021. But this “Chicago” is not another radical rethinking of a canonical work, nor is Kosky clearing the cobwebs from an aged classic, as he did previously with “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Candide.” This “Chicago” is simply a damn good show, with an attention to choreography and musical verve rarely found outside Broadway or the West End. The production offered further proof, if any was needed, that Kosky has made the Komische Oper — which has always embraced various forms of music theater — the best place for classic American musicals on the continent.The show, performed in a limber German translation by Helmut Baumann and Erika Gesell, is impeccably cast. Katharine Mehrling, an acclaimed chanteuse and regular Kosky collaborator, brings the right mix of naïveté and tenacity to the role of Roxie Hart, the washed-up chorus girl whose trial for murdering her lover catapults her to stardom. As her jail mate and rival vaudevillian Velma Kelly, Ruth Brauer-Kvam gives a sexy, assured performance. She’s also the cast’s truest triple threat, singing, twirling and acting her way through the evening without breaking a sweat.Jörn-Felix Alt brings a rakish, matinee-idol charm to his performance as Billy Flynn, the shyster lawyer who orchestrates media circuses for his female clients. Andreja Schneider makes a sassy, straight-shooting Mama Morton, the crooked warden of Cook’s County Jail, while Ivan Tursic doesn’t overdo the pathos as Roxy’s chump of a husband, Amos.The music, performed in its original 1975 orchestration, sounds fantastic played by a full orchestra — a luxury you rarely get on Broadway. The conductor Adam Benzwi shapes the music with precision and vitality, and his band gives the changing temperatures and moods the score requires.Jörn-Felix Alt, center, brings a rakish, matinee-idol charm to his performance as the lawyer Billy Flynn.Barbara BraunHandsome and sleek, the staging is as stripped-down as some of Kosky’s other recent productions, but he also knows when to pull out the stops. Mehrling makes her bold entrance in “All That Jazz,” trailed by a dozen dancers hiding behind red ostrich feather fans. Kosky brings back the razzle-dazzle in the final number, “Nowadays,” when Roxy and Velma are outfitted in the sparkliest suits legally permitted onstage. In between, Victoria Behr’s costumes provide plenty of other fresh and smoothly executed ideas, including orange silk robes for the prisoners and surreal touches like masks of oversized heads and cartoon lips.The choreographer Otto Pichler, credited as a co-director, crafts sparkling dance numbers for the soloists and his 12-person troupe with nary a finger snap, twist or slow-motion hip roll in sight. This is a welcome choice, since anything that is overdone — even a style as vivid as Fosse’s — can become fossilized.After the Komische Oper opened its season with a monumental production staged in an airport hangar, “Chicago” is the company’s first show at the Schiller Theater, its temporary home, in the west of Berlin, while lengthy renovations to its historic house continue.Luring audiences to the other side of town this season doesn’t appear to be an issue: Even before opening night, virtually the entire run of “Chicago” had sold out.ChicagoThrough Jan. 27, 2024, at Komische Oper Berlin; komische-oper-berlin.de. More

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      Well-Made, and Massively Weird: A New Theater Season in Berlin

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      Recent premieres in the city ranged from a spare take on the recent Broadway hit “Prima Facie” to a dose of sheer artistic lunacy.It may be less polished and more rough-hewed than in New York, London or Paris, but Berlin’s theater scene is uniquely diverse, unpredictable and boundary-pushing. Buoyed by lavish public subsidies and boasting a fleet of remarkable actors and daring directors, it is also uncommonly accessible, thanks to low ticket prices and the growing popularity of English surtitles.This season, Berlin’s five main repertory theaters will present a total of 87 premieres, 29 of them at the Deutsches Theater, a storied playhouse that opened in 1883. Its new artistic director, Iris Laufenberg, opened her tenure by programing the German-language premiere of Suzie Miller’s “Prima Facie,” a recent hit on Broadway and the West End that won Tony and Olivier Awards, including for its star, Jodie Comer.The Hungarian director Andras Domotor stages the one-woman play as a chamber drama, with minimal props, stark fluorescent lighting and lots of empty space for his star, Mercy Dorcas Otieno. While the staging embraces a degree of abstraction rarely seen in commercial theater in London or New York, the show is also a vehicle for a prodigious and fearless actress.Otieno, who was born in Kenya, delivers a sweaty and emotionally naked performance as a lawyer who defends men accused of sexual assault, and then finds herself the plaintiff in such a case after she is raped by a colleague. She carries this intense 100-minute-long show on her capable shoulders and commands our attention long after the absorbing drama of the play’s first half gives way to clunky speechifying toward the end of the evening.A more compelling and disquieting exploration of sexual assault and trauma is “In Memory of Doris Bither,” written and directed by Yana Thönnes and running at the Schaubühne. The play is based on the true story behind the 1982 film “The Entity,” a hit horror flick that starred Barbara Hershey as a woman who claimed she was sexually assaulted by a malevolent spirit occupying her house in Los Angeles. In 1974, Bither, a single mother living with her four children, was at the center of a sensational investigation into paranormal activity that Hollywood later served up for entertainment.Performed in a mix of German and English (with surtitles in both languages), “In Memory of Doris Bither” does not so much recreate the alleged haunting as examine how the case — and the success of “The Entity” — reverberates. On Katharina Pia Schütz’s sparse set, the interior of a sterile suburban home, a wash of pink wallpaper, carpeting and curtains, the actors Ruth Rosenfeld, Kate Strong and Heinrich Horwitz obsessively sift through memories and try to make sense of Bither’s torment. The play’s horror, it becomes clear, is not supernatural but psychological.My only complaint about this absorbing and uncanny show is that it ended abruptly after 70 intense minutes. Then again, the play’s unfinished quality, its lack of resolution, may be intentional: Bither, who died in 1999, claimed the haunting was real until the very end.Heinrich Horwitz, Ruth Rosenfeld, and Kate Strong in “In Memory of Doris Bither” at Schaubühne.Philip FroweinAt the start of this busy theater season, new plays by two leading German-language writers were elevated by young, dynamic directors who crafted fluid and stylish productions for texts that were rather uneven.The novelist and playwright Rainald Goetz shot to prominence 40 years ago with the novel “Insane,” a nightmarish odyssey through a madhouse. Ever since, he has been a bad boy of the German literary scene, known for a sprawling literary blog and a novel about ’90s techno culture. His latest, “Baracke,” is a poetic, rambling and infuriatingly undramatic play about German history, family violence and the impossibility of finding love.For the work’s world premiere at the Deutsches Theater, the young Swiss director Claudia Bossard has served up a stylistically varied, epoch-spanning staging that provides a gloss on Goetz’s epic grouse while sometimes subverting it. Nine intrepid actors courageously follow their director into battle, even if the stakes of Goetz’s stream-of-consciousness text aren’t always clear.Over at the Berliner Ensemble, there was more focused critique in the prolific German-Swiss writer Sybille Berg’s “Things Can Only Get Better” (“Es kann doch nur noch besser werden”) a dystopian parable about A.I. and the Metaverse taking over our lives. It’s somewhere between a screed, a cautionary tale and a blackly comic satire.Perra Inmunda, Amelie Willberg and Meo Wulf in “Things Can Only Get Better.”JR Berliner EnsembleThe director Max Lindemann floods the stage with digital projections, while actors with illuminated smartphones glued to their hands cavort jerkily on a rotating platform. The characters receive an endless succession of Amazon packages, praise the “great men who have made our lives so easy: Bill, Jeff and, naturally, Elon” and brag about using ChatGPT to write plays. Everything Berg says does seem worrying, but her targets are a bit obvious and the dialogue is often glib.Like with “Baracke,” the production comes to the rescue, with movement, light, outlandish costumes and eclectic music by the Swiss D.J. Olan! It’s another step in the right direction for the Berliner Ensemble, the playhouse that has recently cast off its conservative reputation and emerged as one of the Germany’s most interesting theaters.It has become de rigeur to bemoan the loss of Berlin’s gleefully anarchic and experimental side, most clearly represented, perhaps, by the recent transformation of a famous former squat into the slick photography exhibition center Fotografiska. But Berlin can still be relied on to deliver some sheer artistic lunacy.“Baracke” at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin.Thomas Aurin“Toter Salon” is a monthly series of short performances written and directed by Lydia Haider and performed in an intimate venue at the Volksbühne theater. During the most recent installment, “Blut,” Haider stood in front of a coffin and officiated a gleefully blasphemous mass, which was frequently drowned out by the droning and often earsplitting score, by the Austrian electronic music artist Jung An Tagen.In her satanic priest garb, Haider also approached the spectators with an ice bucket full of white wine spritzer, which she drizzled into the mouths of willing audience members. For those unwilling to get down on their knees to receive her communion, there were Bloody Marys in plastic shot glasses. Sloppy, underdeveloped and massively weird, the hourlong performance was an endurance test.Yet suffering though the plumes of cigarette smoke, cheap booze and earsplitting music, I was oddly pleased that Berlin’s theater scene could accommodate both this level of experimental insanity and a well-made play like “Prima Facie.” Berlin may have lost much of its famed wildness, but at least when it comes to theater, there’s something for everyone. More

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      Christian Thielemann to Succeed Daniel Barenboim at Berlin State Opera

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      The conductor, an acclaimed Wagnerian, was named to replace Barenboim, who stepped down in January after three decades because of health problems.For months, the Berlin State Opera, one of the world’s premier opera houses, has been in a state of uncertainty. Its revered leader, the conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim, resigned in January after three decades in charge because of health problems. Musicians and cultural leaders questioned whether anyone would be able to match his impact and influence.But on Wednesday, German officials said they had found their maestro: the acclaimed Wagnerian Christian Thielemann, the principal conductor of the Staatskapelle orchestra in Dresden, who will take over as general music director of the Berlin State Opera in September 2024.“It was a perfect match,” Joe Chialo, Berlin’s senator for culture, said in an interview. “This is a new beginning.” Thielemann, 64, the heir to storied maestros like Wilhelm Furtwängler and Herbert von Karajan, for whom he once served as an assistant, praised the opera house’s “long and illustrious tradition” and thanked Barenboim for his “wonderful work and constant support.” As a child, he said he traveled from West Berlin to East Berlin to catch performances at the opera house.“I’m proud I can be part of this tradition,” Thielemann said in an interview. “Daniel is such a wonderful musician and he has inspired me always.”Barenboim, who has known Thielemann since he was 19, said that “his musical talent was already obvious back then and he has since developed into one of the outstanding conductors of our time.” He said he was pleased to see him take the helm of the opera and its renowned orchestra, the Staatskapelle Berlin.“I have been at the helm of these very special musical institutions for over 30 years, and I am sure that, under the leadership of Christian Thielemann, they will continue to maintain and expand their exceptional position in Berlin and international musical life,” he said in a statement.Thielemann, who is from Berlin and led the Deutsche Oper there from 1997 to 2004, will face significant challenges at the State Opera, including restoring a sense of stability after a tumultuous period.The institution has been in flux over the past couple years as Barenboim, 80, a towering figure in classical music who has built an artistic empire in Berlin and helped define German culture after reunification, grappled with health issues. He was diagnosed last year with a serious neurological condition, and he said in January that the illness made it impossible for him to carry out his duties.The uncertainty of his condition placed strains on the opera house. It was left scrambling to find substitutes for Barenboim, including for a highly anticipated new production of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle last year, for which Barenboim tapped Thielemann at the last minute.Thielemann and Barenboim have a complicated history. When Thielemann was at the Deutsche Oper, he complained publicly about its low level of government support compared with Barenboim’s State Opera. At the same time, accusations spread that Thielemann had made antisemitic comments about Barenboim, who is Jewish. Thielemann denied making the comments at the time. The two men never broke and have spoken and met regularly over the years.Thielemann said on Wednesday that the two men had a strong relationship and that Barenboim was a critical influence in his career. “I owe him,” he said. Daniel Barenboim at the State Opera in Berlin in 2017.Odd Andersen/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhen he stepped in for Barenboim last year, Thielemann deepened his bond with the Staatskapelle Berlin and became a favorite of the orchestra’s players, who were influential in his selection.When Chialo started his term as Berlin’s top culture official in April, he made arrangements to meet Thielemann. “The orchestra was jumping up and down and preferring him,” Chialo said. Elisabeth Sobotka, the Berlin State Opera’s incoming artistic director, said she felt Thielemann’s vision and musical approach were close to Barenboim’s.“There was a very, very special atmosphere between him and members of the orchestra,” she said. “It all comes very naturally to him, and the musicians trust him.”Thielemann rose to prominence in his 20s, winning posts at German opera houses, including in Düsseldorf and Nuremberg. He led the Munich Philharmonic from 2004 to 2011, leaving amid disagreements with the orchestra’s managers. He served as music director of the Bayreuth Festival in Germany, a showcase for Wagner’s work, from 2015 until 2020. He was the artistic director of the Salzburg Easter Festival in Austria, founded by von Karajan, from 2013 until last year. While he was once a regular in the United States, he has reduced his commitments there significantly over the past couple decades. But last year, he made a triumphant return, taking the podium of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for the first time since 1995 in performances of Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony.Succeeding Barenboim will not be easy. During his tenure, he brought the Staatskapelle to new heights, leading international tours and securing hundreds of millions in government grants to finance his ambitions. He persuaded officials to build the Pierre Boulez Saal, a Frank Gehry-designed hall housed in the same building as a music academy. And he pushed a costly renovation of the opera house’s main theater that was finished in 2017. The State Opera last year had 587 employees and a budget of roughly 81.4 million euros, or about $85.9 million.Barenboim maintained his grip on power, despite occasional troubles. In 2019, members of the Staatskapelle accused him of bullying; later that year, though, the opera house, saying that it could not verify the accusations, extended his contract.As his health worsened last year, Barenboim initially resisted resigning his post and told friends and family that he planned to return to the podium. But even as he kept up some appearances, attending rehearsals and teaching classes in Berlin, it became increasingly apparent that he could no longer lead the opera house full time.Thielemann said he hoped to bring more operas by Richard Strauss to Berlin, including the rarely staged “Die Schweigsame Frau,” and that he was eager to find ways to connect with younger audiences.“If people think, ‘I don’t go to an opera house because I think it’s so stiff and I don’t feel comfortable,’ then one has to take away the fear from them,” he said.Thielemann’s career has had its share of drama; he has left some positions under tumultuous circumstances. He said he had learned from his years in the music industry. “When you are young, you are more temperamental and you make more mistakes,” he said. “I’m trying to be a little bit wiser, especially coming into a so well-organized institution.” More