There is not much to see yet of the renovation of the Komische Oper. If you walk along the main building in Mitte, you will only find a wooden construction fence that runs around the building complex. Through gaps between the boards, you can see three large, well-filled garbage containers on the side open space facing Glinka Street, as well as a few Euro pallets and a pile of black cables that are reminiscent of a school of eels.
The Senate Building Administration in charge has deliberately left it open how many years it will take to upgrade the old structure and build a new side wing with rehearsal rooms, ticket office, canteen and roof terrace restaurant. But there will be at least six. How good that the audience followed the ensemble without complaint to the Schiller Theater’s Charlottenburg exile quarters. Since the move last September, the average capacity utilization of the performances has been a sensational 94.3 percent – an increase of four percent compared to the previous year.
Kosky stages musicals and minimal music
At the start of the season, visitors reacted particularly enthusiastically to Hans Werner Henze’s “Raft of the Medusa” in Hangar 1 at Tempelhof Airport. And the 2024/25 season will also start here, then with the staged version of a baroque oratorio, namely George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah”, staged by Damiano Michieletto.
Barrie Kosky is bringing out a new production of the Stephen Sondheim musical “Sweeney Todd” at the Schillertheater, together with general music director James Gaffigan, who will also direct the premiere of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” (director: Kirill Serebrennikov). For his second production, Kosky chose the minimal music opera “Akhnaton” by Philipp Glass, composed in 1984.
Dagmar Manzel will bring Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel” to the stage in January, and Franz Wittenbrink will compose a musical theater version of Otfried Preußler’s “The Little Witch” for the premiere. The series of GDR operettas continues with Gerd Natschinski’s “My Friend Bunbury” (directed by Max Hopp); a guest performance from Basel is the version of Eugène Labiche’s comedy classic “A Florentine Hat,” which Herbert Fritsch and Herbert Grönemeyer performed under the title “Pferd eats hat”.
Source: Tagesspiegel
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