2016 March 24rth

“Opera can be at the height of the time with such ease” Roland H. Dippel dnn/Kulturnews

GUTENBERG#

World premiere:

Digital Revolution, a piece development by Martina Veh
and Gutenberg, opera in one act (9 scenes) by Volker David Kirchner
Text by the composer, in German with surtitles

part 1: digital revolution

idea & concept: Martina Veh
parts from St. John Passion (BWV245) and B-Minor Mass (BWV 232)
by Johann Sebastian Bach,
combined with electronic sounds by Gunnar Geisse

Foto: Lutz Edelhoff

Live electronics / composition: Gunnar Geisse

Conductor: Samuel Bächli

Director: Martina Veh
Stage design: Christl Wein, fettFilm

Moderator: Mark Pohl
Chorus: Andreas Ketelhut
Dramaturg: Berthold Warnecke

Fotos on the right: Lutz Edelhoff

worldpremiere: March 24rth 2016, Grand Theatre
further performances: April: Sun 3rd | Fri, 8th | Sun 17th | Fri, 22nd

Soprano: Daniela Gerstenmeyer

Mezzosoprano: Katja Bildt

Bass: Gregor Loebel

Opera Choir of theTheatre Erfurt

Philharmonisches Orchester Erfurt

in cooperation with "Thüringer Bachwochen"

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part 2: worldpremiere: GUTENBERG
Opera by Volker David Kirchner in one Act (9 Scenes)

Text by the composer
Sung in German

In cooperation with “Thüringer Bachwochen”
Theater Erfurt March 24th 2016
 
Conductor: Samuel Bächli
Director: Martina Veh
 
Dramaturg: Berthold Warnecke
Set & Costume Design: Christl Wein-Engel, fettFilm (Torge Möller, Momme Hinrichs)

Foto: fettFilm

Conductor: Samuel Bächli
Director: Martina Veh
Stage Designer: Christl Wein, fettFilm

Drawings (Video): Freddy Engel

Choir: Andreas Ketelhut 

Gutenberg: Siyabulela Ntlale

Nurse: Katja Bildt

Boy: Cornelius Joseph/Chiara Grenzdörfer

Provost: Julian Freibott

Peasant woman Katja Bildt

Leader: Reinhard Becker

Innkeeper: Gregor Loebel

Solo-Soprano: Daniela Gerstenmeyer

Drizehn: Won Whi Choi

Becher: Nils Stäfe

Henrici: Gregor Loebel

Journeyman Rupprecht: julian Freibott

Housekeeper: Nils Stäfe

Injoured man: Won Whi Choi

1. Citicen: Julian Freibott

2. Citicen: Gregor Loebel

Emissär: Nils Stäfe

Housekeeper: Katja Bildt

Steven Jobs: Mark Pohl

Opera Choir of Theater Erfurt

Philharmonic Orchestra Erfurt

Extras

Who is Johannes Gutenberg? He is iconic as someone who throughout his life was an unswerving fighter in the daily struggle with the church and the prince elector. Until nowadays, the history of Gutenberg has still an impact above all through the most important invention of his time: letterpress printing with movable letters. This revolutionised the concepts of knowledge and power!

In what kind of world do we live now, 500 years later? The digital age with its unlimited potential has ended the analogue age, has left the Gutenberg galaxy behind, made the world a village, broadened our horizons to infinity and brought to light an unimagined treasure of human creativity, thereby unleashing new invrntional spirit. Consequently, the opera leads beyond the limited reality of Gutenberg's life and spans the arc to our present day, ending with an "epilogue in heaven", where "the old gene meat" meets Apple founder and internet guru Steve Jobs after his death in (cyber) heaven.

The composer Volker David Kirchner was born in Mainz in 1942. He has been one of today's leading composers for over four decades. On the one hand, he is regarded as a pioneer and companion of the avant-garde music in the last third of the 20th century, but on the other hand his musical forms and expression never deny tradition: "Thinking ahead while being aware of the roots. Tradition shall be a filter towards the future". (Kirchner) After having had the worldpremiere of "Savonarola" in Kiel 2011 in Germany, Kirchner is once again willing to deal in his new piece "Gutenberg" with a very strong personality, of the Late Middle Ages, who is at the same time visionary and contradictory.

The world premiere of Kirchner's opera at the Erfurt Theatre is preceded by a first part in "Cyber Heaven", in which the choir, in particular, deals scenically with the digital revolution.

This is why Martina Veh invented a first part of the evening in "Cyber Heaven", referring to the digital revolution: She brings excerpts from the St. John Passion and the B minor Mass by Johann Sebastian Bach to the stage and supplements them by electronic sound worlds by the german composer Gunnar Geisse: The mutual penetration of digital and analogue sounds makes the overriding theme of this world premiere sensually perceptible on all levels.

HUMAN MASS

Volker David Kirchner's opera Gutenberg is the starting point of Martina Veh's concept for the opening part of this production - "Digital Revolution". She found four essential elements for this in Volker David Kirchner's score:

1. The open ending: dead Gutenberg meets the Apple founder Steve Jobs in heaven. This inevitably led her to have the first part of the evening in cyber heaven - in his libretto Kirchner himself speaks of "cyberspace" - and reflects on the digital revolution of our time.

2 The shift in power which Gutenberg's invention of printing with movable letters brought a shift in the power s of the clerus. This can be seen very clearly in Kirchner's conflict with the church - specifically in his encounter with the Provost. regarding this, Martina Veh reflects in the first part of the evening on shifts in today's social structure which have been triggered by the digital revolution, such as the relationship between "mass human beings" and "mass goods".

3. Kirchner raises the question of people's awareness of a changing vision of the world and the opportunities it offers. How aware were people of the possibility of revolution back then? What opportunities and possibilities do we have today, do we regard them as a change for the better?

4.The genious inventor and his individual death: even for an inventor of groundbreaking innovations will struggle with the circumstances of real life facing his death, even if he tries to negate it, as Steve Jobs, for example, in his "observations of a manager": "Even people who want to go to heaven do not want to die for it," he said a few years before he died from cancer.

Major questions of life and death demand major music. Bach's cosmos of his St. John Passion and the B minor Mass are our playing field in the first part, which Martina Veh encounters with images and electronic music by Gunnar Geisse. The main actor is the Choir - the mass of human beings - thrown into the digital universe.