»Chaosmos« von Sinan/Rausch/Kästner, © Wuppertaler Bühnen
The fourth call for proposals for the NOperas! funding initiative is now open.
This gives theater makers the opportunity to realize a music theater project in cooperation with several German-language municipal theaters throughout Germany during the 2022/23 season.
Teams that are jointly responsible for the interaction of the theater levels (composition, text, direction, stage) can apply throughout Europe until May 24, 2021.
Participating in the current cycle are the Theater Bremen and the Musiktheater im Revier, Gelsenkirchen. This time the Theater Bremen will be the first producing house.
The projects supported by feXm will be decided by an expert jury consisting of representatives of the sponsor and the participating theaters as well as three independent experts from the field of contemporary music theater.
All information about the call for proposals and the application can be found under “Announcement 2021“.
Collage ©Christina Schmitt
As the second production of the NOperas! support initiative, “Kitesh” will celebrate its premiere at the Halle Opera House in October.
Along Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera “The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Virgin Fevroniya” and with new compositions by Alexander Chernyshkov, the music theater collective “Hauen und Stechen” delves into the old, almost mythological spirituality in the Volga region and explores what mystery and faith, as relics of a lost past, can still do. The immersive music theater project involves the audience directly.
The premiere is on October 18th, further performances will follow on October 24th and 30th, before the production will be staged in Wuppertal (January 2021) and Bremen (July 2021), each in a further developed version.
Neues Team: Theatergruppe Oblivia (Foto) gemeinsam mit der Komponistin Yiran Zhao (© Saara Autere)
With the project “Obsessions” by the composer Yiran Zhao and the Oblivia theatre group, the third production of the “NOperas!” funding initiative will start in the 2021/22 season in Bremen and Wuppertal.
Within the framework of the “NOperas!” funding programme, the expert jury of the “Fonds Experimentelles Musiktheater” (feXm) has selected the third production for realisation. The project “Obsessions” by the Chinese composer Yiran Zhao and the Finnish theatre group Oblivia will be first produced at Theater Bremen in the 2021/22 season and then further developed at Wuppertal Opera.
The Oblivia theatre collective was founded in Helsinki in 2000. Since then, it has made an international name for itself with audiences and critics alike with performances that transcend genre boundaries and address major themes with extremely minimal theatrical means. The musical works of the young Chinese composer Yiran Zhao aim at the interdisciplinary and, in addition to elements of the performative, often include those of the visual arts. Since 2014 they have been interpreted by renowned contemporary music ensembles and have been performed at renowned festivals.
As part of a celebrated joint work with Yiran Zhao for the Stuttgart festival “Eclat”, Oblivia ventured into the special area of music theatre for the first time in February 2020. The continuation of this collaboration is now planned within the framework of “NOperas!”, which is supported by feXm with 170,000 Euros. With musicians and singers from the ensembles of the participating theatres, the project will for the first time also include other actors in addition to the performers of Oblivia. By using different theatrical means, the two houses will each have their own way of dealing with the title theme.
