November 2025

funded by Kulturfonds Bayern 2025 of the Free State of Bavaria, State Ministry of Science and the Arts Markus Blume
and the private sponsor Kristi Prenn and other companies
Friends of the ensemble Cosi Facciamo e.V.

Music theater project to commemorate the end of the war 80 years ago and the artists defamed during the Nazi era

THE SONG OF THE EARTH
degenerate music of the Nazi era - in the mirror of our hope for the evolution of democracy

MUSIC THEATER EVENING on a journey through Germany with Thomas Loibl with a cross-section of ostracized Jewish composers:
Fanny and Felix Mendelsohn, Alma & Gustav Mahler, Max Bruch, Heinrich Kaminsky, Ilse Weber, Kurt Weill, Hans Eisler, Georg Kreisler and others.
Texts by Heinrich Heine, Franz Kafka, Fania Fenelon, Thomas Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger, Else Lasker Schüler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Walt Whitman, Elisabeth Frischauf (world premiere)

Patron: Frido Mann (grandson of Thomas Mann)
November 19, 2025 Kurhaus Bad Tölz

an event by ensemble for early music new così facciamo

further performances planned in Bavaria

May 2025

For the double anniversary of Kurt Weill: exciting music theatre of the 20s and 30s:

The Seven Deadly Sins / The Tsar has himself photographed
Ballet with singing / Opera by KURT WEILL
Text by BERTOLD BRECHT / Opera buffa in one act by KURT WEILL, text by GEORG KAISER
Premiere, Sunday 4 May 2025 at 7.30 pm

Musical direction Olivier Pols
Direction & Choreography: Martina Veh
Stage: Thomas Dörfler
Costumes Christl Wein
Lighting Manfred Wilking

Choir director Aymeric Catalano
Dramaturgy Andreas Bronkalla

Pfalzphilharmonie Kaiserslautern | Chorus of the Pfalztheater
 
Kurt Weill is one of the most remarkable composers of the first half of the 20th century. His work stands like no other for the colour of the Weimar Republic and for a new conception of musical theatre. The year 2025 marks both Weill's 125th birthday and the 75th anniversary of his death.

“The Seven Deadly Sins” is the last collaboration between Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. In a sophisticated combination of song and dance, it tells the story of the sisters Anna I and Anna II's path to success through the cities, in which they sell themselves piece by piece. The deadly sins of capitalism.
The grotesque one-act play “Der Zar lässt sich photographieren”, based on a text by Georg Kaiser, tells the story of a tsar who wants to be photographed in the photo studio of the beautiful Angele in Paris. Assassins exchange the “real” Angele for a “fake” Angele and a weapon is hidden in the camera.

“Both works carry an unyielding radicalism in their very own way. On the one hand in 'The Tsar' through a completely new role of the spectator, which poses the question of what outcome of the play the audience wishes for in this time of upheaval, and in 'The Seven Deadly Sins' through the role of the family/society, which, through its demands on the individual, denies them their humanity and alienates them, divides them. What unites both plays is the new approach to the audience of the time, albeit in completely different ways.”
 
Photos: Thomas Doerfler

May/June/November 2022

September 2024

March 2025

Early Music Ensemble così facciamo:

Giulio Cesare in Egitto (London 1724) in Italian with German surtitles, combined with works by George Gershwin.
"Cafe Nireno" at the end of the world!
Jazz, drugs, sex and the business of war, bursting with life, emotion and intrigue at every moment!

Preview in Aschaffenburg on 28 May 2022
Premiere at the Cuvilliès Theatre Munich

"In Cairo in the 1920s, world powers collide in a confined space. Images of the enemy are solidified, alienation and delusions of grandeur, the urge to conquer the unknown and the deep human desire for domination, love and recognition make their way. The rise and fall of a world empire are always close together - everything has its price!"  Martina Veh

Musical direction, version: Hans Huyssen,
Idea and version: Stephanie Krug
Direction, idea and version: Martina Veh,
Stage: Stefan Wintersberger,
Costumes: Nikolaus Maier
Lighting: Wieland Müller-Hasslinger

Assistant Director/Production Assistant/Stage Manager: Maximilian Liman

Poster Design Office Hersberger

Production: GbR Ensemble Così Facciamo

With: Bernhard Landauer / Lena Spohn (Mezzosopran – Giulio Cesare), Tamara Obermayr / Franziska Weber (Mezzosopran – Sesto), Martina Koppelstetter / Eva Summerer (Alt – Cornelia), Stephanie Krug / Milena Bischoff (Sopran – Cleopatra), KS Christopher Robson (Countertenor – Nireno), Joel Vuik (Countertenor – Tolomeo), Christoph Schweizer / Joel Frederiksen (Bass – Achilla), Nikolaus Maier (Stumme Rolle), dem Jazzensemble mit Matthias Preissinger (Klavier) und Stefan Schreiber (Saxophon) and the ensemble così facciamo on historical baroque instruments.

more about this work

13 April 2024:

María de Buenos Aires

Tango-Operita by Astor Piazzolla, text by Horacio Ferrer
with texts by Italo Calvino in a version by Martina Veh
In Spanish with German surtitles

A unique synthesis of the arts consisting of opera, poetry and dance - a
Homage to Buenos Aires and the tango

Premiere 13.04.2024, Grand Theatre, Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern
Matinée 07.04.2024

trailer 1:15 min.

 
Musical direction: Anton Legkii
Direction & Choreography: Martina Veh
Set: Christl Wein
Video: WeareVideo (Raphael Kurig / Christian Gasteiger)
Lighting: Manfred Wilking
Choir direction: Aymeric Catalano
Dramaturgy: Andreas Bronkalla

Assistant director: Alicia Mayer
Choreographic assistance: Anna Angelini
Artistic counselling in Argentinian culture: German Icancic
Argentinian language coach: Tamara Jazmín Odón
Prompting: Peter Floch
Technology: Matthias Henche / Daniel Hoymann

Narrator: Olaf Becker (actor)
Maria: Astrid Voßberg (mezzo-soprano / actress)
El Duende: Jonathan Möller Montenegro from Chile (acrobat / actor)
La sombra de Maria: Andrea Cisterna Munoz from Chile (acrobat / actress)
Payador / Gorron / Psychoanalyst / Voz de Domingo: Oscar Oré (tenor)

Dance & choreographic material development: Anna Angelini, Astria Apel, Mariano Galeano, Saskia Hamala, Hojoon Moon, German Ivancic, Alberto Pagani
Tango Argentino & Choreography: Astria Apel, Mariano Galeano
Modern Tango: German Ivancic

Pfalzphilharmonie Kaiserslautern / Choir of the Pfalztheater

In Astor Piazzolla's opera, María is the human embodiment of the tango, the person who seeks happiness in the city, in life and in death. A ghost appears, the ghost of the city, El Duende. Like Orpheus, he seeks his Eurydice/Maria in the world of the living, and in the world of the dead, for the road network of existence continues in the underworld, where a final judgement once again questions the meaning between consciousness and oblivion. With a suitcase full of dreams, Maria had travelled from the suburbs to the city, the world of brothels, bars and endless streets. Both coveted and outcast, she is a sufferer, but also a symbol of hope.

The lyrical texts by the poet Horacio Ferrer define the panorama of life in the Argentine metropolis of Buenos Aires, which Astor Piazzolla brings to life with his music. The spectrum of styles ranges from the typical milonga, an early form of tango, to the Spanish-Cuban habanera to tango nuevo and jazz elements, combined with classical forms of composition such as fugue and toccata. In this way, Piazzolla's opera also shows the multiculturalism of the tango, which emerged in the 19th century in the port cities of Buenos Aires and Montevideo under the influence of immigrants from all over the world.

"I had the idea of composing an opera about Buenos Aires ... This mental game never left me, even in my dreams.  In reality, this dream was born in 1958 on Broadway during the performance of "West Side Story" by LEONARD BERNSTEIN. But at that time it remained only in my head until I met HORACIO FERRER and told him my somewhat crazy idea ..." Astor Piazzola, composer, founder of Tango Nuevo

With the kind support of the Friends of Pfalztheater e. V.
From 16 years

© fotos: Christl Wein

»María de Buenos Aires«: Tonos Music Publishing oHG, Baden-Baden

Parts from »The Invisible Cities« by Italo Calvino:
Copyright © 2002, The Estate of Italo Calvino, used by permission of The Wylie Agency (UK) Limited.
© German translation by Burkhart Kroeber:

2007 Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, München.

Thanks to The Friends of Pfalztheater e. V. 

from March 20 to November 21, further performances: February and May 22

Le nozze di Figaro
Opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Text by Lorenzo Da Ponte after the comedy La folle journée our Le mariage de Figaro

by Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais
World premiere Vienna 1786
In Italian with German surtitles

Premiere: March 21, 2020, Theater Erfurt, grand theatre at 7.30 p.m.
postponed to November 27th 2021

Conductor: Samuel Bächli
Director: Martina Veh
Stage design: Momme Hinrichs (fettFIlm)

Video: fettFilm (Momme Hinrichs & Torge Moller)
Costumes: Momme Hinrichs / Hank Irwin Kittel

Conte Sijyabulela Ntale
Contessa Elbenita Kajtazi
Susanna Daniela Gerstenmeyer | Sarah Hayashi
Figaro Ks. Máté Sólyom-Nagy
Cherubino Florence Losseau, Karina Repova, Iris Marie Sojer
Marcellina Katja Bildt
Basilio | Don Curzio Ks. Jörg Rathmann
Bartolo Kakhaber Shavidze
Antonio Juri Batukov
Barbarina Sarah Hayashi 

Duration 3 h
One Interval
Age recommendation from 14 years
 
Mozart's Commedia per musica permeades the characters and situations with his music. Between extraordinary confusions, we experience a world beneath the skin of the characters: between pent-up needs, humiliation, rebellion and triumph, lovers become hunters and are whirled with disillusions by their own fears and lies. "We all live between desire and fulfillment, between what we want and what we allow us to want, between who we are and who we would love to be," says director Martina Veh. "I'd like to take a look through the crack in a door into a dressing room, a "boudoir", where underwear still might be lying on the floor, sheets are still warm from bodies and a towel might have been forgotten under a bed or sofa."

© foto: Lutz Edelhoff 

18 March 2023

 

JOHN CAGE's SONG BOOKS

MUSIC FOR NERVOUS SYSTEMS

 

Micro Oper München follows its own path through John Cage's collection of experimental concept pieces - a dazzling kaleidoscope between music and theatre. What rules apply? What role does chance play? Surprises are guaranteed. www.micro-oper.de

Cornelia Melián: voice, objects
Masako Ohta: prepared piano, objects
Ernst Bechert: electronics, voice
Anton Kaun: noise, electronics, video
Martine Nicole Rojina, sound enineer, lighting technician at Schwere Reiter
Martina Veh: outside eye

A production of Micro Oper München in collaboration with Meta Theater and Kunstverein Rosenheim. Made possible by the Tonkünstlerverband Bayern with funds from the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and Art as part of the project TONKÜNSTLER LIVE SPECIAL. Supported by MUSIKFONDS / The Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media

©  graphic work: Maja Bechert

more about this work

December 2021 / May 2022 / July 2022

HAIFISCHBECKEN, a satirical show
 
A production of Studiobox, Theater Erfurt
by Martina Veh, Markus Weckesser, Mila van Daag

Stage and costumes: Mila van Daag

2nd December 2021 / 13th of May 2022 / 6th of July 2022 / 30th of March 202

 

30 March 2023 / Shark Tank 4 - New Heroes!

The success of the German premiere of Pleasure by Mark Simpson in the STUDIO-BOX Erfurt at the Erfurt Theatre makes us come together to discuss whether opera needs new heroes, how future repertoires should be knitted and how the theatre of the future can become an integral part of urban society for ALL.
Shark Tank invites all interested guests to Pleasure's stage set to talk together about the design and direction of a future repertoire.

"The world is fragmented into many small possibilities.... But the bigger the possibilities, the smaller the world in which we think?"

Chair / Martina Veh
Guest / Roland Dippel (cultural critic, dramaturge, author)
Guest / Mathis Nitschke (composer, director and producer)
Guest / Cristiano Fioravanti (director of the German premiere of Pleisure)
Music / Ralph Neubert

May 13, 2022 | Shark Tank 3 - Art as a Weapon
An event of the festival weekend "Where is Europe?"

Is theater subsidized cave painting or irreplaceable part of the democratic public? Is art the serious case? A weapon? The shark tank continues.

You will see Martina Veh moderating and her guests, conductor Vitali Alekseenok (Belarus), singer Máté Sólyom-Nagy (Hungary), violinist Vesselin Paraschkevov (Bulgaria), author and actress Katja Hensel, stage designer Christoph Ernst and photographer Sylwia Mierzynska (Poland) turn their gaze towards Europe. Musical surprises from our singers:inside interrupt the debate.

 

 December 02, 2021 | Shark Tank 2 - Debate?

The theaters are closing, democracy is dying. And where is it, the public, what forums of presence communication, of lively debate could theater offer? Above us the sharks are circling and we...? Prepare an opera talk show.

Jakob Arnold, young theater director and co-initiator of the theater festival PHOENIX, the stage designer Christoph Ernst, Tobias Knoblich, head of the department for culture and urban development of the city of Erfurt, will jump into the shark tank with us on December 2.

Host Martina Veh discusses with them the really uncomfortable topics of the day. The conversations will be accompanied by Frido Mann, author of "Democracy will win," violinist Vesselin Paraschkevov, theater musician Franz Leander Klee and ensemble members of Theater Erfurt.

 

July 6 2022 / Shark Tank 1 - Closed Society

Shark Tank extra - an event by STUDIO.BOX and Phoenix 2.0
Open theaters! But for whom actually?


Are theaters closed worlds to which many do not find access or have no access? With the Shark Tank extra we move into the Kulturquartier.
Martina Veh and her guests direct the gaze out of the theaters to those who have to stay outside. Musical surprises interrupt the debate.
 
copyright photos: Lutz Edelhoff
copyright poster: Mila van Daag

September 2022
 
Me, Hildegard von Bingen, Voice of Light,

play with music

Premiere on 16 September 2022

Bad Ischl, Salzburg, St. Johann in Tyrol, St. Veit im Pongau
Further venues in planning

with
Sigrid Hausen (singing, acting),
Berta Rieder: (acting, singing)

Lighting idea: Wieland Müller-Haslinger
Director, version: Martina Veh
Author: Michael Korth

St. Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) was the most versatile nun of the Occident. A healer and naturalist, mystic and advisor to popes and kings, painter, poet and composer, she was revered like a saint even during her lifetime. Hildegard's 77 surviving chants - with notes and texts - show her to be a powerful and sensitive composer whose musical work deviates from all traditional models.

The play recounts Hildegard's life as an energetic abbess, her struggle for equal rights, tells of her overwhelming visions, her artistic work, her insights into God's universe and tells the story of her great love for Richardis von Stade, which almost broke her. Closely connected to the monologue are Hildegard's hymns, which, brought to life anew by the singing of the actresses, make Hildegard's grandiose world view and world of thought audible and tangible.

© foto: Regine Heiland

opening Neubau schwere reiter Munich
geöffnet - we are open
(The arts are back: choreographers, theatre makers, and musicians will present impressions of their works on the opening days of the new "schwere reiter" - in cooperation with tanztendenz, Pathos München, scope and the Arts department of the City of Munich. Artistic direction of the whole programm: Christoph Reiserer, Alexander Strauch)
 
The Blind
German premiere by Richard France (NYC),  prologue (excerpt) for one actor.
2021 on September 18th at 5 pm,

We find ourselves with Barabbas - the prisoner released in the trial of Jesus - in a prison cell, shortly before his death, after an unexpectedly "given" life. In the light of his own fate, he poses the question of fear and anger, the question of the free will and the mutability of the myths and stories that shape a society.

With: Tom Jaspers van Huijkelom (Amsterdam)
Direction and version: Martina Veh

soundscape: Alexander Strauch

more about this work

SILENT FILM 2020

a short film by Martina Veh & Christopher Bodenstein, 10 min.

A documentary short film: The silence of artists from the Munich cultural scene in a forest on April 28, 2020 at the time of the COVID-19 shutdown. The artists are standing still. For 90 minutes. The texts come from cell phone interviews.

worldpremiere: FSFF (Fünf Seen Film Festival) 2020, Starnberg, August 31rst 2020 short film cathegory

 
Martina Veh: direction, production, conzept, editing
Christopher Bodenstein:conzept, camera, editing
Gunnar Geisse: Sound Design, composition

Julia Horkel: Assistant
Ivo Yordanov: 2nd camera

thanks to Thomas Radigk, Julia Horkel,
Tmc production mit Thomas Morgott, Ivo Yordanov, Max Acker, Emil Jakob, Pietro Fiorito, Cvetan Ivanov
Lichtscherbe Sonja Lenkeit und Wolfgang Wein GbR, Andreas Hofmann photohraphy
Johannes Brucej, Marie-Louis Ott, Dr. Marie-Carin von Gummpenberg, Stephan Lanius, Stephanie Krug, Christl Wein, Matthias Helwig, Seraphin Veh, Nicolai Baehr

© foto: Christopher Bodenstein

May 2019

Don Giovanni by W.A.Mozart
sung in Italian with German titles

Theater Lübeck, Main Auditorium, Germany
Premiere:  May 10th 2019

link  to trailer

Conductor: Kommissarischer GMD Andreas Wolf
Director: Martina Veh

Dramaturg: Dr. Katharina Kost-Tolmein

Set Designer: Momme Hinrichs (fettFilm)

Video: FettFilm (Torge Moller & Momme Hinrichs)
Costume Designer: Julia Berndt

Lighting Designer: Kevon Sock

Directors Assistant: Effi Mendez, Tom Jaspers van Hujikelom

Choir of Theater Lübeck, Choir-Master: Jan-Michael Krüger
Philharmonisches Orchester Hansestadt Lübeck

"All the ways you wish you could be, that's me.
I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck,
I am smart, capable, and most importantly,
I am free in all the ways that you are not."

"It's only after we've lost everything
that we're free to do anything."
Fight Club, David Fincher

copyright picture: fettFilm

July 2019

ANDIAMO (part 1)
[ ahn-dyah-maw ]
[ ɑnˈdyɑ mɔ ]

Interjection Italian.
Let's go; Hurry up.

Premiere: Wednesday 03-07 21:00 Theater de Leeuw Leeuwensteinplein 1 Arnhem

In the foggy universe of an abandoned swimming pool…
a man in swimming trunks is sitting on the edge of a pool. We never see his face, just his
back. And there’s a pierrot. ‘Come on!’ The man doesn’t respond... Any which way he can
conceive, in various attempts and identities, the pierrot tries to persuade the man to move.
A dance of a devil. ‘Andiamo!’

 
Can a performer’s voice, without using any words, express something that

everyone worldwide immediately understands, feels and appeals to?

Inspired by Erwin Olaf's Berlin and Mozart's Don Giovanni,

we are making a short vocal, musical and visual research-performance.

Concept, music, composition, scenography & performance: Tom Jaspers

Performer: Tim Schouten

Coaches: Martina Veh (final direction) Michiel Bijmans (voice & composition)
Caterina Amarante Pavan (costume)

Ben van Bueren (music) & Clare Dowling (production)

Thanks to musicians from Philharmonisches Orchester der Hansestadt Lübeck:
Masao Fukuda (oboe)

Waldo Ceunen (flute)

Sigrid Strehler (cello)

Adrian Pavlov (harpsi-chord)

Image: Bella Donna Nag / Made possible by Smink Schilders, Daan Wieman, Jeroen de Man,

October 2018

La Boheme by Giacomo Puccini

Sung in Italian with German titles,

Premiere for the opening of the season 2018/19 for

Mainfranken Theater Würzburg , October 13th 2018.

Conductor: GMD Enrico Calesso  

Director: Martina Veh

Set Designer: Emilie Delanne

Costume Designer: Magali Gerberon

Lighting Designer: Roger Vanoni

Dramaturg: Berthold Warnecke

Philharmonic Orchestera Würzburg, Operachorus (Chorus master: Anton Tremmel) and extras of the Mainfranken Theatre

With: Silke Evers, Daniel Fiolka, Tobias Germeshausen, Mathew Habib, David Hieronimi, Roberto Ortiz, Kosma Ranuer, Igor Tsarkov, Akiho Tsujii, Taiyu Uchiyama

"Life is what happens to you

while you're waiting

for your ship to come in."

Uma Thurman in "Mad Dog and Glory"

a painful fresh look at the subject

copyright foto: Martina Veh

more about this work

October 2017 to January 2018

Award winning production: "OPERA OF THE YEAR 2017" Main-Post 

press review

Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Sung in Italian with German titles, Premiere for the opening of the season 2017/18 for

Mainfranken Theater Würzburg, October 7th 2017 7.30 p.m. link to theatre

Philharmonic Orchestra Würzburg, Opernchorus of the Mainfranken Theatre

Conductor: GMD Enrico Calesso  

Director: Martina Veh

Dramaturg: Berthold Warnecke

Set/Video Designer: fettFilm (Momme Hinrichs, Torge Moller)

Costume Designer: Christl Wein

Lighting Designer: Roger Vanoni 

Drawings (for video) Designer : Freddy Engel

Chorus master: Anton Tremmel

© fotocollage: Christl Wein 

With: Silke Evers, Marzia Marzo, Akiho Tsujii, Roberto Ortiz, Daniel Fiolka, Taiyu Uchiama

Composed in the year 1789, premiered in January 1790, Così fan tutte marks a significant historical turning point. Così fan tutte was Mozart’s third and final collaboration with the librettist Lorenzo da Ponte in the final year year of government of Habsburg’s Emperor Joseph II, by whom the opera was commissioned. It is also the first stage work of Mozart's after the French Revolution, whose political impact reached the Vienna’s Imperial Court with some delay and was subject of lively discussions in the Imperial House at the time. Cosi’s reception has always been complex. The opera was variously considered immoral, unfinished, cruel or simply odd since its 1790 premiere.

The Raven by Toshio Hosokawa (*1955),Text by Edgar Allan Poe/
and the GERMAN PREMIERE of Heart Sutra by Christian Jost (*1963)
Text by Joyce Chiou after a shortstory by Zhang Ailing
two chamber- operas in English

Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern, Germany, Werkstattbühne in Cooperation with
Théâtre National de Luxembourg (December 7th/10th )

Premiere in Kaiserslautern: June 18th  2017 at 8 p.m.

Premiere in Luxembourg: 7th December
 

Conductor & musical study with members of the Orchestra: Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern: Johannes Witt

Conductor with United Instruments of Lucilin in Luxembourg: Jonathan Kaell
Director: Martina Veh
Set&Costume Designer: Christl Wein

Lighting Designer: Harald Zidek
Painter on stage: Freddy Engel

© fotos Heieck

with:

Polina Artsis (Mezzosoprano: Mother in Heart Sutra/The Raven),

Peter Floch (Tenor: Boy Friend in Heart Sutra),

Aoife Gibney (Soprano: Daughter in Heart Sutra),

Monika Hügel/ Thérèse Wincent (Soprano: Girl Friend in Heart Sutra)

Two contemporary chamber operas are in many ways located between Asia and the western world: The Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa (*1955) choosed the poem „The Raven“ of Edgar Allan Poe to create a mono-Opera for Mezzosoprano and 12 Players, (worldpremirere 2012 in Brussels). He found in the supject of the poem analogies to the japanese Nō-Theater. The story is about a mysterious night,  in which a man meets in his study room unexpectetly a raven, who becomes the medium to get into contact with his deceased lover.

The German composer Christian Jost (*1963) travelled since the 90s often to China and worked there with different Chinese orchestras. He was deep in contact with the Chinese musical tradition, when he and his librettist choosed a shortstory and the poem „The Love of a Falling Leaf“ by the famous chinese writer Zhang Ailing, for the chamber opera „Heart Sutra“, commissioned by the Taiwan International Festival (worldpremiere in Taiwan 2012). The action of "Heart Sutra" leads to the Shanghai of the 1930s and tells a mysterious love story between four people with surprising correspondences.

„In the autumn sun
on the cement ground
they sleep quietly together
the leaf and its love.“ (Zhang Ailing)

__________________________________________
„And the raven, never flitting,
still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas
just above my chamber door“ (Edgar Allan Poe)

mehr zu heart sutra

mehr zu the raven

February 2017 to March 2018

Jo Wá 

how to live!?                    

Mobile Music-Theatre-Preformance by John Awofade Olugbenga and Stephan Lanius

Premiere: Feb. 23rd 2017, 8.30pm, Teamtheater Salon Munich                                                        

duration: 55 min.

John Awofade Olugbenga: Actor, Percussion,
Stephan Lanius:  Performance, Double Bass,
Ebun Bamijoko Okungbaye: Coaching   
Martina Veh: Director

Foto: H. Lobinger                

             
The musician John Awofade Olugbenga from Nigeria is telling us about life in his nigreian community. Stephan Lanius confronts these stories with well known fables and fairy tales from Greek Classical Antiquity and European ways of thinking.

This production then tours in the social facilities (schools, prisons, schools for special needs, community spaces) of Munich and the surrounding area.

With the kind support of the cultural department of the state capital Munich and the GLS Treuhand e.v.

COMMENT: What is the point of our art? We should be fools! In the best sense! Court jesters, responsible for the close observation of the present. And with the present in mind, responsible for the creation of alternative realities, in terms of perspectives, perception and experience, identity, memory or different states of being... A variety of changing perspectives and possibilities. Our concept of "reality" is changing through AI technology.
The means of theatre can only ever be the means of the present. Unfortunately, due to various circumstances, theatre today has always lagged decades behind technical possibilities before using them as naturally as painted backdrops. In the visual arts, media art, we are now looking back on 3 decades of experience with mixed reality in VR and AR. In our daily reality, even if it is not always visible to the naked eye, there is a lot of virtuality. This is a good reason for the medium of theatre to reflect on this and experiment with it.

A theatre that feeds exclusively on the past does not really deserve the name theatre. Let us rather be generous. After all, experimentation began in theatre (Charly Chaplin) and later led to silent film and many other forms of human expression... including the prefiguration of film music in the music of Richard Wagner... as well as the art of video game design.
Let's not forget, the green hill was created to give space to an experiment.... The outcome was open! Otherwise it would not have deserved the name experiment if failure were not allowed. Without failure, there is no development!

Today, no one talks about the use of video art in stage productions. This has become a matter of course. Today, however, no one talks about the problem of the smartphone for the dramaturgy of film or series concepts with regard to character design. One should not make such a big fuss about the possibility of experimenting on the theatre with the given possibilities. And let's not forget that the stage and its performance techniques, developed over centuries/thousands of years, still form the basis for all the other technical art forms that have emerged through film and digitalisation. The only category that counts is whether it can captivate the individual spectator and show him new fields of thought, effortlessly.
Through my experience of working with fettfilm, specialists in video art on stage and also in other spaces, I can only say how infinitely delightful the task is of exploring new worlds together in the directing team with diverse new technical possibilities, especially in a stage space, always in service to the content and theme of the play, close to people and their glamour and abyss.

March 2019

"Im Narrenland"

(jester's country)

mobile Music-Theatre-Performance about diversity and extremism

by John Taha Karem and Stephan Lanius

duration: about 60 min.

Premiere: March 28th 2019, 8.30pm, Teamtheater Salon Munich                                                        

Taha met with neo-Nazis, members of PEGIDA and other

people of different extreme political orientations.
He has bravely exchanged with them amazing conversations.
Taha wants to fight stuck thinking and open up space for something new.
He has dealt with these questions for 25 years.

He fled from Kurdistan to Germany in 1993 and ever since he has been

standing between his own and the German culture.

Mullah Nasreddin is a legendary figure of oriental tradition.
With his winking short stories he breaks traditional thinking patterns

and rigid prejudices.

Taha Karem - Daf, Narrator
Stephan Lanius - Performance, Double Bass
Shadi Hlal - Viola
Nadja Fiebiger - Coaching
Martina Veh - Director
Konzept, Idee - AsylArt e.V.

This production then tours in the social facilities (schools, prisons,

schools for special needs, community spaces) of Munich and the surrounding area.

With the kind support of the cultural department of the

state capital Munich and the GLS Treuhand e.v.

September 2017

PAINTING MEETS MUSIK
Exhibition.

Exhibition of works, painted during the performances and rehearsals of  "THE RAVEN" at Fruchthalle Kaiserslautern. Vernissage on September 29th at 6: 00.p.m.

The large-format pictures by Freddy Engel were created as a major part of the Chamber Opera"The Raven" by Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa. The famous poem by Edgar Allan Poe was put on stage by the director Martina Veh at the Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern (Premiere June 18th  2017)
The works were produced in interaction between the artist and actor Freddy Engel, who acted on stage together with Mezzosoprano Polina Artsis in June/July at Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern.

©   Freddy Engel

October to December 2016

“unconventional and experimental” BR Klassic

ULISSE
by Claudio Monteverdi, musical version by Martina Veh and Joachim Tschiedel at
Lager West, Prinzregententheater München (ulisse on facebook)

Premiere: Oktober 17th 2016 at 8p.m.

Conductor/Organ: Joachim Tschiedel

Orchestra: Accademia di Monaco extra:

Franziska Dolling (Flutes), Maria Fitzgerald (Harpsicord), Dorothea Kügler (Hammered Dulcimer), Franz Anton Peter (Hammered Dulcimer), Prof. Birgit Stolzenburg (Hammered Dulcimer), Anna Zimre (Viola da Gamba)

Director & Set Designer: Martina Veh
Choreographer: Toni Gruber
Costumes: Christl Wein-Engel
Lighing Designer: Benjamin Schmidt
©  fotos: Jean-Marc Turmes

Stage Manager, Assistant Director: Marie Philine Pippert, Clara Tolle
Costume Assistant: Annika Österreich

Technical Production Manager: Stefan Wintersberger
Stage Master: Andreas Böhm, Markus Flossmann
Video Editor: Raphaela Andrade

Production Manager: Alexandra Zöllner

With
Pia Buchert (Penelope), Jaeil Kim (Eurimaco), Jessica-Veronique Miller (Penelope), Julia Moorman (Melanto), Bavo Orroi (Telemaco), Andromahi Raptis (Iro), Stefan Sbonnik (Ulisse), Clara Corinna Scheurle (Penelope), Irakli Atanelishvili (Nettuno) und Andreas Böhm (Worker)

© copyright of the musical version: Martina Veh & Joachim Tschiedel

Duration:  90 minutes, no interval

At the harbour. Waiting women. Ulisse had gone to war with his warriors --a war that was not of his business. Penelope, his wife, is still waiting him for 20 years. She and her son Telemaco, who never met his father, are just two of the many deserted. The story of Ulisses‘ difficult homecoming begins.

With an extensive and breathtaking arrangement, the Director Martina Veh and the Conductor Joachim Tschiedel, they bring Monteverdi’s Ulisse in a new guise on stage.

Theaterakademie August Everding and University for Music and Theatre Munich with the Masterclass of Opera.

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March 2016

“Opera can be at the height of the time with such ease”

Roland H. Dippel dnn/Kulturnews

Gutenberg
Worldpremiere: Opera by Volker David Kirchner in one Act (9 Scenes)
Text by the composer
Sung in German
In cooperation with Thüringer Bachweeks
Theater Erfurt, Premiere: March 24th 2016
 

Philharmonisches Orchester Erfurt

Conductor: Samuel Bächli
Director: Martina Veh
 
Dramaturg: Berthold Warnecke
Set & Costume Design: Christl Wein-Engel, fettFilm (Torge Möller, Momme Hinrichs)
© foto 1: screenshot: fettFilm, © foto 2-5: Lutz Edelhoff

with:

First part:

Sopran: Daniela Gerstenmeyer

Mezzosopran: Katja Bildt

Bass: Gregor Loebel

Opera Chorus Theater Erfurt

second part:

Gutenberg: Siyabulela Ntlale

Steven Jobs: Mark Pohl (actor)

Schwester (Nonne), Die Neuberin, Die Haushälterin: Katja Bildt

Knabe: Cornelius Joseph/Chiara Grenzdörfer

Probst, Geselle Ruprecht, 1. Bürger: Julian Freibott

Anführer: Reinhard Becker

Wirt, Henrici, 2. Bürger: Gregor Loebel

Solo-Sopran: Daniela Gerstenmeyer

Drizehn, verwundeter Mann: Won Whi Choi

Becher, Hausdiener, Emissär: Nils Stäfe

Opea Chorus Theater Erfurt

 
For his whole life Johannes Gutenberg was an unswerving fighter in the daily struggle with church and nobility. Until today, Gutenberg’s most significant invention is still relevant: he invented the book printing with movable type. With his vision Gutenberg fundamentally revolutionized the concepts of knowledge and power of his time! And in what world do we live now, 500 years later? The digital age, with it’s “limitless” possibilities, has brought the analog age to an end, has left the Gutenberg Galaxy behind (?) It has made the world to a village, expanded our horizons into the endless and an unprecedented treasure of human creativity and caused a new anleashed dimension of creative process and vision. 

Consequently the Opera leads us from the limited daily life experiences of the historical character Gutenberg into our present world. We end up with an “Epilog in heaven”, where Gutenberg, in his historical real life called “Gensfleisch” (Goosemeet), meets Apple founder and Internet guru Steve Jobs to reflect time, human existence and the meaning of knowledge…

Born in 1942 in Mainz, Volker David Kirchner remains among the leading contemporary composers for more than four decades. He is one of the forerunners and companions of the avant-garde of the last third in the 20th century, but his musical expressions never deny the tradition: “Think forward and  be aware of your roots. Tradition is the filter into the future.” (Kirchner) Kirchner searches in “Gutenberg” again the struggle with a visionary and contradictory personality of the European late middle ages, as he did in his last work “Savonarola” premiered 2011 in Kiel.

The world premiere of Kirchner's Opera at the THEATER ERFURT is complemented by music of Johann Sebastian Bach in a first part of the evening - an homage and collage by Martina Veh and Gunnar Geisse (electronical composer) to the Digital World and Steve Jobs.

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February to November 2016
 
L’INCORONAZIONE DI POPPEA
Claudio Monterverdi

Conductor: Hans Huyssen
Ensemble così facciamo

Director: Martina Veh
Set & Costume Designer: Nikolaus Maier
Assistant director: Christine Schmidle
© foto: Hermann Posch
 
with
Poppea: Stephanie Krug (Soprano)
Nerone: Christian Sturm (Tenor)
Ottone: Christopher Robson (Countertenor)
Ottavia: Martina Koppelstetter (Mezzosoprano)
Drusilla: Monika Lichtenegger (Soprano)
Seneca: Joel Frederiksen (Bass)
Arnalto:: Carsten Fuhrmann (Tenor)

An erotic political thriller (1642)

The love of your life is everything, but never harmless.
Nero, tyrant of a world Empire, Poppea, his mistress.
Political violence, adultery, commanded suicide.
How do you expect it to end?
What ist the real motivation in life?
TB or Not TB! Appearance and reality
are reflected in the light of different perspectives,
that lie like a cloak over the abyss. Martina Veh

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