Ein Sommernachtstraum

In the organizer's words:

Opera

With music by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Erich Wolfgang Korngold | Text version based on the comedy by William Shakespeare
In German language

Music creates images, voices tell stories. In a cross-genre concert format, Felix Mendelssohn's famous music transports us to a world in which strange things happen that can only be explained by magic... In a forest outside Athens, two lovers, fairies, elves and a group of theater-loving craftsmen meet for a rehearsal. William Shakespeare's comedy links several storylines and interweaves the story of the young Athenian noblemen Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius and Helena with the machinations of the fairy king and queen Oberon and Titania. A colorful game of confusion unfolds on the stage of the Opera at Luisenpark, in which one character of all people controls the fate of the evening and holds the strings in his hand: Oberon's cunning servant Puck. Mendelssohn composed an overture to "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the age of 17, after he had become acquainted with the Shakespeare play in German translation. He only completed the work as incidental music years later at the request of King Frederick William IV of Prussia. Mendelssohn's dazzling score is juxtaposed with the equally colorful and vivid film music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, whose version, written in 1935 for Max Reinhardt's feature film, is closely based on Mendelssohn's musical motifs, but finds its own unique and expansive tonal language. OPAL thus brings together gripping music and great material in a new version that combines Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" into a playful evening about love, magic and intrigue. This content has been machine translated.