Music

Once to be realised

Six encounters with the unclassified Project Files of Jani Christou directed by Michael Marmarinos

Dates

Prices

5 — 18 €

Location

Onassis Stegi

Time & Date

Day
Time
Venue
Day
Friday - Sunday
Time
20:30
Venue
Main Stage

Information

Tickets

Onassis Stegi Friends presale: from 31 MAR 2022, 17:00

General presale: from 4 APR 2022, 17:00

Full price: 18 €
Reduced, Friend & Groups 5-9 people: 14 €
Groups 10+ people: 13 €
Neighborhood residents: 7 €
Unemployed, People with disabilities: 5 €
Companions: 10 €

Group ticket reservations at groupsales@onassis.org

Venues

The performance has as a starting point Panteion University (136 Syngrou Avenue), passes through the underpass of Syngrou Avenue, and ends at the Onassis Stegi building

Language

In German and English with Greek Subtitles

Michael Marmarinos and six contemporary music theater composers contend with the unclassified drafts of Jani Christou, known as Project Files, in a performance that resembles ancient drama, but also social sculpture.

In the last years of his life Jani Christou created nearly 130 project outlines to be realized later on. He was only able to work out a few of them before his untimely death in a car accident in 1970 on his 44th birthday. Most of these visionary drafts were never realized in the just under 50 years following his death, and only now will become the inspiration of a new music theater work.

Together with the renowned Greek director Michael Marmarinos, six composers, who are among the most distinguished creators of contemporary music theater, will tackle Christou’s designs. They encounter them with their own musical language, explore them, let themselves be inspired, and work their way through them, in order to use their own means and their own ideas to continue and write on into the future. The result is a music theater that is as much an archaic drama as a social sculpture.

Six encounters with the unclassified drafts of Jani Christou, known as Project Files, by Beat Furrer, Barblina Meierhans, Olga Neuwirth, Younghi Pagh-Paan, Samir Odeh-Tamimi, and Christian Wolff.

    Image 1 / 6

    Photo: Andreas Simopoulos

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    Photo: Andreas Simopoulos

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    Photo: Andreas Simopoulos

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    Photo: Andreas Simopoulos

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    Photo: Andreas Simopoulos

    Image 6 / 6

    Photo: Andreas Simopoulos

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A woman in black, a sound continuum interrupted by an explosion, crowds storming the stage, traffic lights, the deafening singing of the cicadas on Chios in the midday heat, performing in an ensemble as a cipher of social constellations, invoking the metaphysical other, composing as an attempt to break with the musical syntax, or even as a “slight pressure against the limit of meaning”: The cosmos of the Greek composer Jani Christou is labyrinthine branches in the richness of his suggestive images and designs.

He transgresses the purely musical to the integration of scene, text, and image, and at the same time departs from the realms of art, and he sees political and social elements as compositional material, he creates a performance in tangible landscapes and cultural spaces. And ultimately it remains a prophetic design, ONCE TO BE REALISED.

Credits

  • Stage Director

    Michael Marmarinos

  • Assistant Stage Director

    Lea Theus, Helena Menner

  • Set Design, Costumes & Videos

    Yorgos Sapountzis

  • Assistant Set Designer

    Asli Sever Ersüzer Sökmen, Martin Ku

  • Assistant costume designer

    Clara Bohnen, Julia Dietrich, Matthijs Holland

  • Dramaturge

    Sebastian Hanusa, Dorothea Hartmann and Konstantin Parnian

  • Conception

    Lenio Liatsou

  • Conductor

    Cordula Bürgi

  • Light Design

    Steffen Hoppe

  • Video

    Nicolai Roloff

  • Sound

    Clemens Nagl

  • Production manager

    Marie Thiele

  • Mezzo soprano

    Pia Davila

  • Baritone

    Matthew Cossack

  • Perfomers

    Marius Böhm, Meik Van Severen

  • Dance

    Sofia Pintzou

Ensemble dissonArt

  • Flute

    Jannis Anissegos

  • Clarinet

    Alexandros Stavridis

  • Violin

    Thodoros Patsalidis

  • Viola

    Hara Sira

  • Cello

    Vassilis Saitis

  • Piano

    Lenio Liatsou

  • Double Bass

    Yannis Hatzis

  • Percussion

    Kostas Argyropoulos

Cantando Admont

  • Soprano

    Friederike Kühl

  • Soprano

    Elina Viluma-Helling

  • Mezzo Soprano

    Annika Westlund

  • Mezzo Soprano

    Helena Sorokina

  • Tenor

    Hugo Paulsson Stove

  • Tenor

    Bernd Lambauer

  • Baritone

    Matias Bocchio

  • Bass

    Christoph Brunner

Composition commissioned by the City of Munich for the Munich Biennale

A coproduction of the Munich Biennale with Deutsche Oper Berlin and Onassis Stegi

Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation

Composition commissions to Olga Neuwirth, Samir Odeh-Tamimi, Younghi Pagh-Paan and Christian Wolff funded by the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung

Funded by Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council