Mauerschau

An opera about Heinrich von Kleist's "Penthesilea"

Composer Hauke Berheide. Libretto by Amy Stebbins.
In German with German surtitles.

Premiere at 29. June 2016

Munich Opera Festival Thursday, 30. June 2016, 08:00 pm – 09:30 pm , Utopia (ehemals Reithalle).

Duration est. 1 hours 30 minutes

Munich Opera Festival

Prices PG24 , € 24

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Commissioned composition by Freunde des Nationaltheaters e.V.

Komposition	Hauke Jasper Berheide
Musikalische Leitung	Oksana Lyniv
Libretto, Regie	Amy Stebbins
Bühne, Video	Luftwerk
Kostüme	Belén Montoliú
Licht	Benedikt Zehm
Dramaturgie	Malte Krasting
Chor	Sören Eckhoff

Penthesilea	Adriana Bastidas-Gamboa
Penthesileas hoher Schatten	Leela Subramaniam
Achill	Edwin Crossley-Mercer
Achills hoher Schatten	Joshua Owen Mills
Achills tiefer Schatten	Frederic Jost
Botin	Hildegard Schmahl
Penthesileas tiefer Schatten	Hanna Herfurtner

Bayerisches Staatsorchester

War is always "over there". We ourselves don't see it. Soldiers steer drones through the green night and make decisions blindly. CNN and Tagesschau provide aestheticized splinters of a truth which may not even exist. In Kleist's Penthesilea (1808), war is raging, and no one can remember who is fighting against whom or for what reason.

It is by means of Mauerschau - the Greek theater device of describing unstageable scenes as they unfold offstage - that the warring Amazons and Greeks try to get a clear view of the situation; yet Penthesilea and Achilles both misread the other's motives. Achilles plans to feign succumbing to his beloved on the battlefield; unaware of this, she kills him - or was it different? In Mauerschau, reality shatters. Characters and their stories split apart into multiple variations. And the war remains "over there" - in the sound, perhaps? Luftwerk's light and video design suspends all certainty of what's near and what's far. What did we see? What has happened? Will we ever know?

Download Cast List (PDF)