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Friday, 24 February 2012

7.00 pm, Opening Event in the
Anhaltisches Theater Dessau

„Hotel Montparnasse“ ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE
Ballet premiere with orchestra

Kurt Weill: 2nd Symphony
Kurt Weill: Marie Galante
George Gershwin: Klavierlieder
George Gershwin: „An American in Paris“

Direction and Choreography: Tomasz Kajdanski
Musical Direction: Daniel Carlberg
Stage designs and costumes: Dorin Gal
Dramaturgy: Sophie Walz
Vocalist: Ute Gfrerer

Ballet Company of the Anhaltische Theater
Anhaltische Philharmonic Orchestra Dessau


The journey begins! The Kurt Weill Festival 2012 invites you to the Paris experienced by the young Kurt Weill. And if at first glance it seems surprising to begin this aural time-trip with a new production of the Anhaltische Theater's ballet company, in fact this is very much in the spirit of both Weill and the French capital. At the beginning of the 20th century Paris was undoubtedly Europe's dance capital. In particular, impresario Serge Diaghilev (who arrived in the city in 1909) and the Ballets Russes company he founded were causing quite a sensation. In collaboration with composers such as Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Erik Satie or Igor Stravinsky, Diaghilev had opened new vistas for the world of dance, in which ballet and symphonic music were combined in a truly novel fashion.
Audiences in Dessau will also be able to enjoy this impressive symbiosis of movement and music when Thomasz Kajdanski and his ballet company perform the exciting „Hotel Montparnasse“, neatly linking the cities of Paris and Dessau. A lively picture is painted of the 1930s by borrowing elements from exciting biographies of the time and impressive novels of exile. The Parisian district of Montparnasse (The Greek Mount of the Muses), known for its bars, cafés, cabarets which held such an attraction for many artists at the beginning of the 20th century, becomes the location for this Festival Opening. „Hotel Montparnasse“ tells of the hopes and dreams of the emigrants, as well as the nightmares and dejection suffered by many foreigners and artists. The Paris of Kurt Weill is brought to life in this multifaceted and colourful performance, at the heart of which we are shown the love and pain of the emigrants, and their experiences as they struggled to make new lives for themselves.
Alongside works by George Gershwin, the music of Kurt Weill provides much of the atmosphere for „Hotel Montparnasse“. During the period of his Parisian exile from 1933 to 1935, Weill composer his second symphony and later also the wonderful music for the play „Marie Galante“. The latter uniquely manages to combine classical music, jazz, popular dance music and expressionistic sounds, thereby bringing to life the homesickness, the anxieties as well as the hopes of the emigrant population. Furthermore, the fact that one of the songs from „Marie Galante“ – J'attends un navire“ – became a hymn for the French resistance during the German occupation in the second world war, makes clear the degree to which Kurt Weill felt at home in France, and how quickly he was able to absorb local sensibilities. In contrast, the Klavierlieder of George Gershwin, and of course „An American in Paris“, give us the giddy, breathless Paris of the 1930s, while at the same time taking us briefly from this opening of the 2012 Kurt Weill Festival to the 2013 Festival, when we will accompany Kurt Weill on his way to New York.

In cooperation with the Anhaltisches Theater Dessau

The Artist-in-Residence will be presented by LOTTO Sachsen-Anhalt.


With kind support of the NORD/LB
Landesbank für Sachsen-Anhalt