Spring Opera Scenes

Autumn Opera Scenes

Outstanding performers from the first year of Guildhall School’s Opera Course present classical and contemporary operatic excerpts with piano accompaniment.

Autumn Opera Scenes

Outstanding performers from the first year of Guildhall School’s Opera Course present classical and contemporary operatic excerpts with piano accompaniment.

Opera Makers

Join Guildhall School for three exciting new works written by composers and librettists on Guildhall’s MA in Opera Making & Writing in association with the Royal Opera House.

Spring!

The Komische Oper Berlin presents Igor Stravinsky's Le sacre du printemps, a ballet about a spring sacrifice ritual. American conductor Tito Muñoz brings exciting music from across the Atlantic. Soprano Josefine Mindus returns with Brett Dean's contemporary Shakespeare study And once I played Ophelia. The program ends with Charles Ives' The Unanswered Question.

Spring

"Everything rejoices and hopes when spring renews itself," said Friedrich Schiller. Right on time for the beginning of spring, the musicians of the Young Symphony Orchestra at the State High School for Music invite the audience on an exciting musical journey from the mid-18th to the mid-20th century. Joseph Haydn's very special Symphony in F minor, "La passione," already suggests a connection between the Easter and Passion time and Ostara - the Germanic goddess of spring, fertility, and dawn. The inspiration for the program is also evident through the melodious Spring tributes of Frederik Delius, Jean Sibelius, or Lili Boulanger, with the musical journey also leading through distant and unique landscapes of the European continent: from the idyllic plains of England to the cool Parisian mornings and into the Finnish wilderness. Less picturesque, but brilliantly vivid, Antonín Dvorák explores the contrasting colors of the wilderness in a fascinating way in "The Wood Dove." Finally, Johann Strauss gifts us with light, warmth, and coziness in his waltz "Roses from the South."

Avant-scènes

SPARK · Spring Special

The SPARK ensemble will enrich Spargelsamstag with hits from their repertoire, including Baroque masterpieces, a tango, and film music. Their unusual instrumentation combines a piano trio with recorders and a melodica. For 18 years, they've blended classical, minimal music, and avant-garde. In 2011, they won the ECHO Klassik award. SPARK has performed throughout Germany and internationally at prestigious venues like the Barbican Centre.

New Scenes VII

What does a future look like in which researchers aren’t just creating with artificial intelligence, but have also learned to copy people at the computer? This scenario was put forth by economist Robin Hanson in his book The Age of Em – Work, Love and Life when Robots Rule the Earth. Composer Zara Ali from Memphis, Tennessee is currently working on bringing Hanson’s physical-digital hybrids to the stage in what she describes as a sort of “spherical installation” that will place the audience in the perceptual world of these “Ems”. Together with author Hannah Dübgen, Ali is one of the three teams working on next-generation musical theatre for the seventh edition of the NEW SCENES. “We want to make something truly special, not the typical opera,” says the 28-year-old composer. Ali, who studied philosophy at Columbia University parallel to her musical education, frequently experiments with electronics, and works on interdisciplinary projects with string quartets and dancers – and now, for the first time, at an opera house. Huihui Cheng, who attended a school for musically gifted children in Beijing at the age of 14, is particularly interested in the performative potential of compositions. She refers to her past works as “theatrically expanded pieces of music”, such as “Me Du Ça” – part of a series on Greek mythology. Cheng worked with a designer to change the Medusa singer’s hair from snakes into tubes that can be played like flutes. Like Ali, Cheng is interested in technological advancements and the possibilities these bring to the stage. She recalls recently seeing a drone at an Offenbach opera, emphasising that the goal of such methods should be “to convey the beauty of the music and the eternity of emotions”. An opera like the Deutsche Oper Berlin, she says, offers the ideal conditions for exploring innovative approaches. Haukur Þór Harðarson, from Iceland and living in Berlin, co-founder of the composition collective Errata, thinks it’s exciting when New Theatre ...

New Scenes VII

What does a future look like in which researchers aren’t just creating with artificial intelligence, but have also learned to copy people at the computer? This scenario was put forth by economist Robin Hanson in his book The Age of Em – Work, Love and Life when Robots Rule the Earth. Composer Zara Ali from Memphis, Tennessee is currently working on bringing Hanson’s physical-digital hybrids to the stage in what she describes as a sort of “spherical installation” that will place the audience in the perceptual world of these “Ems”. Together with author Hannah Dübgen, Ali is one of the three teams working on next-generation musical theatre for the seventh edition of the NEW SCENES. “We want to make something truly special, not the typical opera,” says the 28-year-old composer. Ali, who studied philosophy at Columbia University parallel to her musical education, frequently experiments with electronics, and works on interdisciplinary projects with string quartets and dancers – and now, for the first time, at an opera house. Huihui Cheng, who attended a school for musically gifted children in Beijing at the age of 14, is particularly interested in the performative potential of compositions. She refers to her past works as “theatrically expanded pieces of music”, such as “Me Du Ça” – part of a series on Greek mythology. Cheng worked with a designer to change the Medusa singer’s hair from snakes into tubes that can be played like flutes. Like Ali, Cheng is interested in technological advancements and the possibilities these bring to the stage. She recalls recently seeing a drone at an Offenbach opera, emphasising that the goal of such methods should be “to convey the beauty of the music and the eternity of emotions”. An opera like the Deutsche Oper Berlin, she says, offers the ideal conditions for exploring innovative approaches. Haukur Þór Harðarson, from Iceland and living in Berlin, co-founder of the composition collective Errata, thinks it’s exciting when New Theatre ...