Staging the Bauhaus
John Cages Europera 5
Guest appearance by the Anhaltisches Theater
Staging the Bauhaus provides the Anhaltisches Theater with an opportunity to work and perform in an experimental setting every year. The focus of the programme is at times on body and dance and at times on sound and tone. In 2018 the theatre, directed by Johannes Weigand, will address Standard in its material and immaterial forms.
Staging the Bauhaus VIII
John Cages Europera 5
29 November 2018
1 December 2018
8 pm
Bauhaus Stage
“For 200 years, Europeans have sent us their operas. Now I'll send them all back." This is what John Cage wrote about his Europeras.
In this work, Cage breaks through the norms of the European opera world of the 18th and 19th century. He not only subjected the music to a random generator, but also the stage sets from dozens of operas, props, lights, dance figures and the operatic aria. Cage did not compose any of the Europera's notes in the true sense of the word, but worked with the material of other composers. The random, uncontrollable combination of music creates new, incalculable references. Europeras is regarded as Cage's biggest and most radical music theatre work. Europeras is now rarely performed.
The annual theme 2018 of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, Standard, is the occasion to re-stage John Cage’s Europera 5 on the Bauhaus stage.
Singer 1: Annika Boos; Singer 2: KS Ulf Paulsen; Piano: Wolfgang Kluge; Victrola: Jürgen Schebera
Director: Johannes Weigand | Production: Nancy Ungurean | Sound: Andreas Baumann
Laboratory of future-oriented research for the optimization of human beings
Maria Dietze (Ensemble of the Puppet Theatre at the Anhaltisches Theater) has written a play for the Bauhaus Festival that deals with the human being of the future: In a laboratory of future-oriented research to optimize the human being, work is being done on the standard human being. A new version of this play is now available exclusively for staging the bauhaus VIII.
Puppetry and play: Maria Dietze, Tizian Steffen; Director: Prof. Astrid Griesbach
Staging the Bauhaus VII
„Substance. Structure. Play“
2 December 2017, 8 p.m.
4 December 2017, 6 p.m.
Bauhaus stage
Johann Sebastian Bach
From The Art of Fugue
Iannis Xenakis
Akrata for 16 Wind Instruments
Béla Bartók
Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta
The Anhaltisches Theater in cooperation with the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation is now developing an exciting project for the Bauhaus stage for the seventh time, offering diverse musical approaches to the Foundation’s annual theme, Substance.
The architecture of musical works is generally based on their fundamental compositional substance, on motifs and themes built up from individual notes. The fugues of Johann Sebastian Bach are of course the most glorious and complex of architectures ever built in this way. As a counter-project to this, the Greek composer Iannis Xenakis preferred instead to leave the traditional fundamental substance of music history behind. This is shown for instance in his Akrata for 16 Wind Instruments composed in 1964/65, a work of unusually timely architecture that focuses on another elemental musical substance – on numerical proportions, i.e., mathematical substance. Béla Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936) gives us one of the twentieth century’s most outstanding compositions, in which the rigorous architecture of compelling, utterly undogmatic logic combines with unfettered musical enthusiasm and spontaneity. In addition to these three main works, the concert will also provide an opportunity for playful interaction with musical substance, in which the audience will be invited to participate…
Conductor: Elisa Gogou