Works
Music Theatre | 2016

Abschlussball

First performance: 15.9.2016
other performances: 16.9.2016-1.10.2016-2.10.2016-22.10.-23.10.-17.11-13.12
Direction, scenes and costumes by Achim Freyer
Texts collated by Steffen Sünkel and Hermann Wündrich
Berliner Ensemble
PRESENTATION
Abschlussball, as conceived by Achim Freyer,  is an active and powerful conglomerate of voices and sonorous movements, a vast vocal fresco announcing an acoustic apocalypse.
The visionary parable conceived for the actors of the Berliner Ensemble is a free, open work where the actors are themselves and interpreters of epical characters at the same time. 
The work is structured in form of a spiral curve rotaing around a deep centre,  consisting in 4 Rondò, each constituted by 12 micro-episodes. The Rondò repeats themselves with textual and choreographic variations, with rallentando and accellerando of the dramaturgy, letting emerge solo voices, mytological characters now incorporated in the charismatic presence of the actors personae.
The actors, with their interpretation create an amplification of each word, an analitycal collocation of each text fragment  into the acoustic space, creating permanent musical sculptures.
I have recorded the making of this soundly orchestra of language, collecting the personal vocality of each actor and fixing it into some choral episodes, where the voices combine a whole fluctuating entity.
The tape accompaining the performance is made by concrete sounds and popular dance fragments coming from the tradition,  from the road, from open and closed social spaces. They represent the outgroup presences, the other existences around the dramaturgical space. The long and articulated sound-collage is the result of a direct collaboration between me and Freyer,  a dialog concretised in the studios of Tommaso Cancellieri and Hermann Leppich, searching and composing together his acoustic ideal vision of the opera. 

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Theater music for Achim Freyer
for soprano, vocalist, actors and tape (2016)
Texts from Homer, Jean Paul, Goethe, Robert Walser, Hoffmann von Fallersleben, Friedrich Hebbel, Georg Büchner and  Gertrude Stein
collated by Steffen Sünkel and Hermann Wündrich
Commission: Berliner Ensemble
Tape-production: Abbey Rocchi Studio, Tommaso Cancellieri (treatment, editing and mixing)
Hermann Leppich (editing and mixing)
Direction, set-design and costumes, Achim Freyer
Video and lightdesign, Jakob Klaffs, Hugo Reis
Choreographie: Arila Siegert
Dramaturgie: Steffen Sünkel, Hermann Wündrich
Esther Lee (soprano), Claudia Lahmann (vocalist)
Berliner Ensemble:
Anke Engelsmann, Ursula Höpfner-Tabori, Esther Lee-Freyer, Celina Rongen, Boris Jacoby, Peter Luppa, Uli Pleßmann, Norbert Stöß, Felix Strobel, Fabian Stromberger, Jörg Thieme (actors, voices, instruments)
First performance: Berliner Ensemble, 15 September 2016
Duration: ca. 120 m