What you can’t talk about because it’s somehow so big and incomprehensible, you can maybe sing about. (Emir Tebatebai)
We imagine that opera does not yet exist. But we live in a time ripe for opera. And great themes are pressing everywhere and no one can listen anymore. So we go in search of an immediate expression. With the arrangement of As-Ob (and unfortunately the exclusion of opera professionals but the inclusion of a traditionally very diverse crowd of guests and professionals in many fields) we set out in January with the first premiere and the journey will continue throughout the year until there will be the great Ururoper in December. Our attempts are also entertainment and our spectators are creative co-creators. So the Ur-Opera will grow with the creative power of everyone, with every feedback, every criticism and every thought.
You can see these experimental stations on the balcony of the Ballhaus Ost, on the first Saturday of every month. The materials, players and music are shifted slightly, but the stage design by UDK stage design students remains the same. For each small original opera, one of the students will stand in and add a special touch.
Ur-Oper #1 »Ich fühls nicht« will break the rules: it will take place on Jan. 19 at 20:00 at Ballhaus Ost, inspired by a comic by Swedish artist Liv Strömquist. Based on Leonardo de Caprio’s emotional burnout, the dramatic question is raised whether the ability to love has left our midst in the face of infinite choices, stress, capitalism and self-actualization? But what does loving even mean? Isn’t everything that happened and was thought before our time toxic anyway? I don’t feel it sounds wrong and paradoxical in the opera genre, of course. In Italian opera, one rather sings of I feel it. But just a moment! We are not in the classical opera genre, but in the unknown world of the original opera. Perhaps the original opera explores the dark space beyond certainties? And is there any subject matter more worthy of opera than the search for love? A group of postwoke dudes with a bunch of homemade puppets, will try to rise to the challenge of somehow doing justice to this cryptic feminist work. They will have to craft many characters, we will follow the comic through time to Socrates and back to the present.
Ur-Oper #2 is a fairy tale: All a boy had was his lucky skin. The naked lucky skin and the desire to breathe, to live. It should go on! Merciless and gloomy: the cold river, the calls in the forest, the blind animals or even the man on the horse. Then again the evening glow, the creatures of darkness and finally the old castle. He who has nothing has nothing to lose and help often comes unexpectedly. Lucky skin never gives up and goes to hell but hell ain’t a bad place to be as a wise guy once said!
In Ur-Oper #3 we want to raise the level together with Jakob Dobers and leave the audience completely in the dark, into which world of sound and song they may enter. Since one Ur-Opera builds on the next and the opera team learns together with the audience from the previous Ur-Operas and can make the journey more and more radical, there is a justified hope for an increase in intensity in part 3!
Das Helmi Puppentheater Kollektiv from Berlin has been at Ballhaus Ost since 2006. Helmi combines many artistic languages and directions in its shows, in which the Helmi puppets and a self-written music always take leading roles.
Ur-Oper #2: 4.2., 22:00
Ur-Oper #3: 4.3., 22:00
Ur-Oper #4: 1.4., 22:00
Ur-Oper #5: 13.5., 22:00
Ur-Oper #6: 3.6., 22:00
Ur-Oper #7: 1.7., 22:00
Ur-Oper #8: 2.9., 22:00
Ur-Oper #9: 7.10., 22:00
Ur-Oper #10: 4.11., 22:00
Premiere
- Jan 19, 2023
Upcoming Dates
- Feb 04, 2023, 22:00
- Mar 04, 2023, 22:00
- Past Dates
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- Jan 19, 2023
- Jan 20, 2023
- Jan 21, 2023
- Jan 22, 2023
A production by Das Helmi in cooperation with Ballhaus Ost and the stage design class of the UdK under the direction of Prof. Janina Audick. Supported by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe.
