Montoliu-Kostüm/Bühne

Mauerschau

Stage director: Amy Stebbins July 2016 Photo Wilfried Hösl

Mauerschau

An opera in 12 pictures
music by Hauke Berheide, libretto by Amy Stebbins

War always happens somewhere else. We don't witness it first-hand. Soldiers fly drones through the green night and make blind decisions, while CNN and other news outlets provide aestheticised fragments of a truth that may not even exist. In Kleist's 1808 play Penthesilea, war rages and no one knows who is fighting whom or why. Using the Mauerschau, an old theatre trick, the warring Amazons and Greeks try to find out what is happening. However, Penthesilea and Achilles misjudge each other's intentions. Achilles only pretends to succumb to his beloved in battle, but she kills him. Or did she? In Mauerschau, reality shatters. Characters and stories branch out into many variations. And the war is always elsewhere – perhaps in the sounds? Luftwerk's lighting and video design suspends all certainties about proximity and distance. What have we seen? What has happened? Will we ever find out?

Conductor: Oksana Lyniv
Director: Amy Stebbins
Set and video: Luftwerk
Costume design: Belen Montoliu
Light: Benedikt Zehm
Chorus: Søren Eckhoff
Dramaturgy: Malte Krasting

Winner of the Munich Opera Festival Prize.

World premiere July 2016.