Der Schmied von Gent

In the organizer's words:

Opera

Great magic opera by Franz Schreker
In German with German and English surtitles

Driven into poverty by slander, a blacksmith makes a pact with the devil: seven good years for the price of his soul. When his time is up, he outwits the messengers of hell, but is also rejected in heaven. In the 1920s, Vienna-born Franz Schreker was one of the most successful opera composers of his time. His breakthrough came in 1909 with "Der ferne Klang", and from 1920-1931 he was director of the Berlin Academic Academy of Music. However, everything changed at the beginning of the National Socialist reign of terror: he was dismissed from his post, was effectively unable to work and died shortly afterwards, shortly before his 56th birthday in 1934. His rich, iridescent musical language, which developed its own idioms between expressionism and late romanticism, fell into oblivion - until a veritable renaissance began in the last third of the 20th century. In 1981, "Der Schmied von Gent" was performed at the Berlin State Opera, but to this day, the great magic opera about the blacksmith Smee, who struggles with heaven and hell, is rarely to be found on the repertoire. In a co-production with Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, the opera, which premiered in 1932, is now coming to the OPAL stage. The director is Ersan Mondtag, whose spectacular theater and opera productions have received international acclaim. Most recently, his radical and poetic theatrical work "Monument of an Unknown Man" was presented in the German pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale. This content has been machine translated.