Opera is a sensory art

What exciting things await at Deutsche Oper Berlin under its new leadership, and how will the institution work with tradition? An interview with new intendant Aviel Cahn, head dramaturg Beate Breidenbach and director of the new Unlimited, Elisa Erkelenz.

Mr Cahn, the theme for the first season under your leadership is «Make love…» How literally or figuratively should we take this?

Aviel Cahn We shouldn’t take it entirely literally, like if we wanted to increase the population of Berlin. I’m already seeing the swings in the foyer! (laughs)

Why not!

Aviel Cahn Seriously though, it’s about the symbolism within the phrase, «Make love…» Until just a few years ago, many people would not have imagined living in times of war, especially in Berlin. The ellipses in the slogan are important for understanding it: Make love…,» because you expect it to be followed up with «…not war,» like in the famous slogan from the late ‘60s. The ellipses also leave room for other things. We’re using the slogan to make a reference to our current times, which is not always evident in opera. But we cannot forget that opera is a sensory art and it’s almost always about love. So there’s a reason for having love in the theme and not war.

Beate Breidenbach Our slogan is a throughline for the entire season. We start with a production of Mittwoch aus Licht from Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Licht cycle, because it centres around love, solidarity and the possibility of community. At the end of the season we will show a new production of War Requiem by Benjamin Britten, with the stage designed by photographer Wolfgang Tillmans. Although it’s not expressed in the slogan for the season, war will be present in the programme.

Elisa Erkelenz The ellipses in «Make love…» are an open space. In Unlimited, which is a new department, we will see which political dimensions are contained within love. It’s important for us that we include various perspectives, be they from our poet-in-residence from the Congo or singers from Ukraine, Iran or Turkey, like in our series Cantadoras, which presents women’s voices in the context of various musical traditions.

Susanne Kennedy is directing Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Mittwoch aus Licht. I anticipate two things here: Tenderness, love, even in the word «light» itself and because Kennedy works so atmospherically and almost psychedelically. But there is also Stockhausen’s harshness at play…

Aviel Cahn Susanne Kennedy’s directorial work often feels like it’s floating on air. And with Stockhausen, I think it’s important to find a directorial style that doesn’t want to narrate a story conventionally from point A to point Z. It wouldn’t do the work justice. Even though Kennedy is one of the most significant German directors of her generation, neither of her last two operas were produced in Germany. For me, it’s crucial that you see something new and fresh from the start. This will be a regular theme throughout this season: Artists whom we know from other contexts, or who are famous abroad. For example, Joris Lacoste from France is staging the debut of Good Vibes Only, and the Belgian directing collective FC Bergman is putting on Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte. These are important artists who have not yet been seen in Berlin.

Beate Breidenbach Astonishingly, the work being put on by Susanne Kennedy has never been performed in Berlin. Stockhausen’s Mittwoch aus Licht has never been shown in its entirety since its debut in Birmingham in 2012. Now we will show its German premiere. For many reasons, including legal ones, it has been very challenging to include Stockhausen in our programme. You really have to know why you’re doing it. This is why we opted for Kennedy as the director, who, in her work, asks what happens when we as a society are missing our communal rituals and then brings these rituals to the stage. It’s an excellent match for the work itself. And Maxime Pascal is more passionate about Stockhausen than any other conductor today. We’re very hopeful about these special circumstances.

Aviel Cahn Yet opening up with contemporary or New Music is not new, it’s in Deutsche Oper Berlin’s DNA. My predecessor Dietmar Schwarz opened with Helmut Lachenmann, and we’re starting with a German-language premiere of Stockhausen. There are other debuts on the big stage and in Unlimited. They address modern themes, as is the case with Good Vibes Only. And I think that this speaks to people who otherwise don’t know how to approach (contemporary) opera. Or they don’t know about it at all! Of course, the repertoire is a key pillar for Deutsche Oper Berlin. But composers like Bára Gísladóttir, who has a residence with us and is writing the score for Good Vibes Only, will be crucial for contemporary works at Deutsche Oper Berlin in the coming years.

Ms Erkelenz, Unlimited will present a lot of modern works, performances and gatherings, from the Tischlerei at Deutsche Oper Berlin to the Berghain nightclub. You are inviting Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija to the opening weekend. Tiravanija has cooked at many museums around the world. Does he also know the way to someone’s heart through their stomach?

Elisa Erkelenz Absolutely! Food will be prepared in places where nobody would expect it. We don’t want to give too much away, but Tiravanija tries to open up institutions for social events. Coming together to eat is especially central to this. Surprising locations within the opera will also come into play as he brings together a range of international artists who are at home in Berlin and approach the opera as a living entity. We’re opening up the theatre to them for a special opening event that everybody is invited to.

Aviel Cahn As an institution with contemporary delights in its programme, we cannot forget about the culinary aspects. An opera always has to offer that. Both worlds can easily come together, too. Rirkrit Tiravanija symbolises this goal in a different way than we are used to in musical theatre.

Unlimited is an ideal name for the cultural and subcultural scenes in Berlin. What can you accomplish with this department that would be difficult in other parts of the city?

Elisa Erkelenz We don’t want to replace anything that already exists. It’s important for us to form alliances in the city, to open up the opera’s «insides» and create spaces, including for connections in the independent scene. Of course, this is exciting from an artistic standpoint as well: The opera is already a forum for multisensory art. We want to vibrantly expand this concept with Unlimited in cooperation with cross-genre partners in the city, from the museum to the cinema. At the heart of Unlimited is the Tischlerei, our second playground for experimentation. Here, we will work more closely with international partners and present more post-migrant voices that can take a different look at what musical theatre is and can be.

One thing a large institution can do better than subcultural spaces is continuity. What will residencies in Unlimited entail?

Elisa Erkelenz There’s a new residency programme, for which we’ve invited a poet-in-residence – Congolese author Fiston Mwanza Mujila – and composer-in-residence Bára Gísladóttir. It’s about immersion, new contexts and the opportunity to experience these artists in entirely different formats and states.

Aviel Cahn The audience will be able to get to know artists in the main programme from all sides. They can do so much more than they can on the big stage. Bára Gísladóttir is not only an extraordinary composer, but also an outstanding contrabassist. Our poet-in-residence, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, both writes and appears on stage.

Elisa Erkelenz To provide just a few examples: Gísladóttir plays a contrabass solo at Berghain and we will show another of her compositions at the Gedächtniskirche, both in cooperation with the CTM Festival. Fiston Mwanza Mujila will appear as a performer together with composer Sofia Jernberg, with whom he is writing an Afro-futuristic opera called Sunville. But he is also hosting an Unlimited Salon on Verdi’s Otello and will perform at the International Literature Festival. Both will also show a film they have selected through our new cinema partnership with Yorck Kinos. There will also be some spontaneous surprises along the way…

Mr Cahn, Berlin has three major opera houses, four including the small Neuköllner Oper. This is a standard question but the answers are always different: How do you hone your profile in such an environment?

Aviel Cahn It might be easiest for Komische Oper, because they also show a lot of operettas and musicals. Staatsoper and we here are in two different corners of the city, and that’s great because it means nobody has to drive for two hours to go to the opera. We coordinate our programmes, but it has happened before that the same work, like La bohème for example, has been performed in front of a full house at both locations. This overlap isn’t bad if it isn’t constant. On top of that, you have to hone your own profile. Everything we have discussed so far speaks for a distinct programmatic approach, I feel.

Let’s step back and take a broader perspective. Thesis: People are suffering from too much digitality. Even in pop music, more natural voices are making a comeback. There is an increasing desire for acoustic sounds and real spaces. All of this is part of opera’s bread and butter. How do you draw in people who don’t know that they can find it here?

Aviel Cahn It’s a little paradoxical. We have to use digital channels to advertise non-digital experiences. And there’s a lot to learn here when it comes to opera, to be honest. Increasingly large marketing campaigns are too expensive, and we have to be better about working with digital media. We also expect to gain a lot from forming lots of new partnerships. Hopefully this will also make us visible to a broader public.

Beate Breidenbach Precisely, but ultimately it’s quite simple. In a city like Berlin, you can hope that quality will spread by word of mouth. From start to finish, there are great performances to be seen!

Beyond individual productions, it often comes down to a special sound experience that many people are unfamiliar with, correct? Berghain has been very successful in having long had the best sound system in the entire city. And someone hearing a great orchestra and great voice for the first time, and not just in Bayreuth, will have an unforgettable experience…

Aviel Cahn And Deutsche Oper has the best acoustics in Berlin!

Beate Breidenbach Plus it’s all live. The view from every seat is good. It was built as an opera for the people, so there are no boxes, no feudal background.

Aviel Cahn We aren’t really the place for Baroque opera, but for the major works, our orchestra pit and main stage aren’t unlike the system in Berghain. It doesn’t mean that neither place has a thing or two they could do better. Anything else would be suspicious in Berlin! (laughs)

Another way to speak to a lot of people is to work with famous directors who are not yet known in the opera world. We mentioned Susanne Kennedy. Milo Rau, easily the world’s most famous theatre director, is putting on Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer with you. You’ve worked with Rau in Geneva. What did musical theatre fans think?

Aviel Cahn We’ve done two operas with Milo Rau. One was Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, which was heavily discussed. The other was a contracted work, Justice, about the raw materials giant Glencore and a chemical accident in Congo. Glencore’s headquarters are in Switzerland and Geneva is the centre of the raw materials trade…

Beate Breidenbach Milo Rau sticks his finger into the wound, right where it hurts the most.

Aviel Cahn Yes, but things stayed largely quiet in Switzerland. A lot of it washes off, a little like a Teflon pan. But that probably wouldn’t be the reception Wagner and Rau have in Berlin (laughs). Milo always takes a documentary approach to the works, including Der fliegende Holländer. The question of deliverance, of a society or an individual, is at the forefront of this opera. Then there’s the entire Wagner universe in the history of its reception up until the Third Reich and beyond. Should Wagner be boycotted, is that sensitive? And when we’re talking about boycotts and anti-Semitism, we end up talking about Israel. We’re really excited for that!

Elisa Erkelenz We don’t evade the potential controversies, but rather accompany a lot of productions with discussions and other contexts. For example, after each production of Der fliegende Holländer, Aviel Cahn sits with guests and the audience for a follow-up discussion. For the Unlimited Salon, we invite people from a wide range of backgrounds to create a sensory introduction. It’s about connecting the opera with themes that many people are thinking about.

If you want to keep the audience in the building after a performance, especially to talk, you need an open bar…

Aviel Cahn Definitely, the bar stays open. We want to be welcoming hosts who offer a cohesive experience. If you have to stand a long time to get a drink and nothing goes right, you don’t want to come again. The sensory aspects are part of the art, but Deutsche Oper Berlin has an incredible culinary infrastructure where the audience and the art can come together. It’s just a great place.

For a theatre of this size, the repertoire is a major asset. Productions can be seen again and again. How do you approach this task?

Beate Breidenbach Together with Vienna and Munich, Deutsche Oper Berlin has the largest repertoire in the world. That’s a treasure that we have to preserve. We do want to slightly reduce the number of revivals, but only in order to supervise the new productions as carefully as possible and to devote a little more time to them. This also concerns the singers. The casts and conductors will surely provide reason to visit one or more productions from the repertoire. Sometimes this is an opportunity to witness theatre history.

How can a layperson imagine how that works with the singers? Sort of like football trades?

Aviel Cahn You strive to get the best, of course.

Beate Breidenbach You have to do a lot of advance planning so that you’re the first person to ask! And we also want to strengthen and further develop our ensemble.

Aviel Cahn The market has changed drastically in the past 30 years. There are certainly a lot of very good singers, but only few are so famous that we could fill the house months in advance because of them.

Why is that?

Aviel Cahn Good question. Maybe it’s because the downright eccentric individualism that can be good for a truly great voice is less in demand today. Or it’s because the body type has changed. The big dramatic roles in Verdi, Wagner or Strauss have become thinner. Many can sing those roles, no question about that, but the personalities are different. There used to be maybe 50 singers who could fill a house on their own. Now there are about five. This could also be due to the fact that the apprenticeships have different requirements now. But the audience’s tastes have also changed. The blockbuster at this theatre in recent years was Antikrist by Rued Langgaard (produced by Ersan Mondtag), not any of the big 19^th-century operas. It’s a great production, but there are no world-renowned singers or legendary conductors in it.

New Music and debuts are just as integral to Deutsche Oper Berlin as Wagner and Verdi are. One example is Good Vibes Only from Icelandic composer-in-residence Bára Gísladóttir and French director Joris Lacoste. It’s a huge production, eight vastly different singers, five instrumentalists and the orchestra. Is the philosophy to not take any half-measures with something new, and offence is the best defence?

Aviel Cahn And please don’t forget the chorus! They’re already here, along with the orchestra and some singers. But such a debut taps into new spaces of resonance when it includes alternatives to conventional opera voices and integrates electronics. We’re also putting Nixon in China by John Adams in the programme once more, which was in many respects an inspiration for composers like Gísladóttir. On the question of size: We don’t have to do a chamber opera on the big stage, which is why we have the Tischlerei.

Beate Breidenbach The Tischlerei isn’t even that small, it can seat up to 400 guests. It’s a boon for a location like Deutsche Oper Berlin, and it’s unique to have a second venue. No other opera house in Berlin has such a prominent studio stage as ours.

Aviel Cahn The theatres that do have similar spaces often use them as rehearsal stages for financial reasons, or leave them out. In spite of the massive cuts in Berlin, it’s important to me that we have a place for an expanded, supplementary and experimental programme.

It seems to me that consumers of visual art are very patient when observing things they don’t immediately understand. Can opera learn something from this? I’m thinking of Britten’s War Requiem, which you are rehearsing and for which world-renowned Berlin-based photographer Wolfgang Tillmans has created a stage installation…

Elisa Erkelenz The often more conceptual approach of many visual artists quite naturally, even casually, leaves room for the thoughts of the audience. This itself can close the gaps because not everything has yet been fully explored by tradition. That’s exciting for us…

Aviel Cahn Presumably, 90 per cent of the material we work with in opera comes from artists who aren’t alive anymore. So it’s a win for me when we work with contemporary artists who are used to making something new every day. This is especially true when it comes to Rirkrit Tiravanija or Wolfgang Tillmans, two of the many first-class artists who have made Berlin their home. In the meantime, we hope that the city will continue to offer these opportunities, including for young artists.

Beate Breidenbach For especially young audiences, we have the Junge Deutsche Oper that has been wonderfully expanded in recent years. We’re going to continue with it, but with some added accents. And, with Jules Verne’s 80 Tage um die Welt, we’re showing a great family opera on the big stage.

Direction, stage, new material, old material: Okay, but ultimately most people are coming to hear the music, right?

Aviel Cahn I think so.

Now your directorship doesn’t have a single general music director, but three relatively young conductors: Maxime Pascal from France, who is conducting the Stockhausen opening premiere, Michele Spotti from Italy and Titus Engel from Switzerland. What led to this decision?

Aviel Cahn The three of them just have very different skills and each cover a unique repertoire, and we want all of that. That’s one reason. The other reason is that we didn’t find one ideal person who covers everything, let alone with agreement from the orchestra. There are a lot of benefits to somewhat amicably leading such a big institution as this. And without a general music director who usually snatches up the biggest works, we have more flexibility and can get our hands on great guest conductors. I’m very excited to explore this with the team. You have to have fun and the audience has to feel that!

 

This interview was conducted by Tobi Müller (freelance writer and cultural journalist).