Don’t make a mess: season preview of opera and drama in Hanover | NDR.de – culture – music
Status: 20.05.2022 5:32 p.m
The coming season of the state theaters in Hanover offers an opulent program. At the Hanover Theater alone, 23 new productions are planned, including eleven premieres and world premieres.
An Italian Catholic deals with the original German Faust myth: The opera season in Hanover started with the romantic opera Mefistofele by Arrigo Boito and a large ensemble, including a children’s choir and an extra choir. It then continues like a fairy tale: Pinocchio’s adventures for the young, the operetta “The Circus Princess” from the 1920s and, last but not least, Dvořák’s Rusalka take up the motto of the season “Happiness and other promises”.
Debussy, Sibelius and Mahler in the programme
“We want to show how the theater can comfort people, how the theater can give people hope, that resonates in the program,” says director Laura Berman and adds: “And in harder times the concept of happiness becomes all the more important, then we learn appreciate the whole thing. Then we see how little we can actually be happy with and how important that is to us in society.”
It has great orchestral works – including Debussy, Sibelius and Mahler Lower Saxony State Orchestra in program. There is also contemporary music, a premiere by the Swedish composer Lisa Streich and a European premiere by the British composer Hannah Kendall. Stars such as Tomáš Hanusch and Mario Venzago as well as representatives of the younger generation such as Baldur Brönnimann and Hossein Pishkar will stand at the conductor’s podium. And the ballet of the Hanover State Opera has also invited the next generation.
Hamlet opens the season
Guillaume Hulot will create a premiere to the sounds of the Canadian Inuit Tanya Tagaq, says the famous ballet director, Christian Blossfeld, and adds: “This is a Corsican choreographer who has found his center of life here in Hanover, who also choreographs throughout Germany. And he does a premiere for us with the title ‘Milk’. It’s about the mother role and the relationship of every person to the mother and what effects or influences these can have on life.
Things get more political at the Hanover Theatre. Marie Bues stages Kevin Rittberger’s play “We are after the storm”, which questions our current way of life based on the climate crisis. Psychological violence is a theme in the adaptation of Thomas Vinterberg’s film Das Fest. The season will open with “Hamlet”, directed by Lisa Nielebock, who recently presented intensive spoken theater with “The Broken Jug”. Last but not least, the piece illuminates the question of violence through political and family constellations and is sadly topical again today.
Ukraine war topic here too
“Due to the invasion of Ukraine, this question of violence has become even more virulent,” says Nora Khuon, chief dramaturg at the Hanover Theatre, and continues: “So the question, how do we deal with violence? How do we get out of it Circle of violence? How do we find other ways of acting? That’s what concerns us, not the reproduction of violence, but the question: How do we face violence and how do we avoid and overcome it?”
For the family play “Mio, mein Mio”, Florian Fiedler, long-standing head of the Junges Schauspiel, returns to Hanover. And the choreographer Guy Weizman is staging again, this time in an intercultural performance dealing with the Occident and the Orient. Fairytale and political subjects – the program of the next season of the Hanover State Opera and Theater offers something for everyone.
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