Eichbaum Opera

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View in front of the Eichbaum stop

The Eichbaumoper is an opera performed in June and July 2009 at the Eichbaum underground station in Mülheim an der Ruhr . The “Eichbaum” stop (line U18 of the Mülheimer VerkehrsGesellschaft mbH) is between the Mülheim-Heißen motorway junction and the 40 federal motorway .

Emergence

The idea of ​​the Eichbaumoper comes from the architects Jan Liesegang and Matthias Rick. The aim was to “connect architecture , theater , music and the city ” in order to initiate a transformation process for a problem area in cooperation with local residents.

The Eichbaum Opera was therefore designed as an "interdisciplinary music and spoken theater piece". The content of the composition was worked out in the container-made “opera building” at the bus stop, with reference to the “topographical and biographical material” of the location in an exchange between artists, residents and district organizations. Parts of the libretto come directly from the local residents' stories, 60 local residents took part in the performances as extras. As a result, new arias and stories resounded between concrete, bars, graffiti and highway noises . Orchestra, opera singers, actors and choirs talked about the people waiting at the bus stop. Regular travel and access to the stop was possible during the performances, parts of the opera also took place within the trains on the route between Essen's Hirschlandplatz and the Eichbaum stop in Mülheim.

A group of architects ( raumlabor berlin ), an opera house ( Musiktheater im Revier ), a theater ( Grillo-Theater ) and an independent theater ( Ringlokschuppen Mülheim ) worked together for the first time in the “Eichbaumoper” project .

The project was funded by the Kunststiftung NRW , the Heimspiel fund of the Federal Cultural Foundation , the Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Mercator Foundation . The state initiative StadtBauKultur NRW , the Mülheimer VerkehrsGesellschaft and the orchestra of the New Westphalia Philharmonic were also involved .

Content of the opera

Eichbaumoper: The grand piano at the bus stop

For the "Eichbaumoper" three composers and their authors wrote three separate parts. These parts have one thing in common: they were created at the Eichbaum stop and in conversation with the neighbors. The composer teams were inspired by the noise and the noise of the autobahn, the individual parts were created in time with the subway.

Derailment! A chamber opera

The first part of the opera begins at the U18 stop “Hirschlandplatz” in Essen. Destination: Mülheim-Eichbaum. The U18 runs every day every 10 minutes, brings people with a wide variety of destinations to the Eichbaum, sees regular guests, commuters, bums and couples getting on and off. And of course the audience too. The subway picks them up, hears the stories of the passengers, spits them all out again at the Eichbaum stop. And she dreams of being able to leave the tracks one day, like everyone else.

Composition / Text: Ari Benjamin Meyers / Bernadette La Hengst
Musical direction: Askan Geisler

Simon the Chosen

Event impression

Young Simon, who grew up in a monastery in Russia, also dreams of a different future. Abandoned there as a baby and raised by monks, he is now leaving the narrow world with a letter from his mother in his luggage and embarking on a new life. He ends up in Mülheim and starts to work. There he meets the landlady Anna, in whom he falls in love at first sight and she in him. But then she finds the letter she wrote twenty years ago. Many years later, Simon reappears and shows miraculous skills ...

Composition / Text: Isidora Žebeljan / Boris Cicovacki
Musical direction: Bernhard Stengel

Fifteen minutes of scrum

Scene from the 3rd movement

Crowds on the platform: people come and go here as well as the sounds of arriving and departing trains and trucks rushing by, as if in a constant crescendo and decrescendo. And so the relationships and stories of Max and Emma, ​​Sven, Anna, Daniel, Sabine and many other travelers come and go, until in the end all that remains is the rhythm of the oak tree itself.

Composition / Text: Felix Leuschner / Reto Finger
Musical direction: Clemens Jüngling

Further development

In the spring of 2010, raumlabor berlin and Ringlokschuppen Mülheim were commissioned to continue participation in the Eichbaum underground station. The projects Eichbaum Countdown , EichbaumBoxer and EichbaumBauer took place within the framework of the research program Experimental Housing and Urban Development (ExWoSt) "Innovation for family and elderly-friendly city quarters" - module "Young people in the city quarter" and were funded by the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development . The actions in the subway station, the immediate area and at the building works aimed at allowing the residents of the surrounding districts and users of the station to repossess the place. In September and October 2010, a boxing ring was created on the platform in close cooperation with the Mülheim-Dümpten boxing club, in which a boxing tournament was held on the first weekend in October 2010 . In a design workshop with the students of the Tersteegen School in Mülheim, a large mural (symbolically depicts the route of the U18 with important urban planning elements) and silhouettes of passers-by (movements and jumps by parkour runners) were developed, which were attached to the access tunnels of the station were.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Report by Deutschlandradios on the inauguration of the opera building
  2. Eichbaum Opera . Project description by the Federal Cultural Foundation
  3. Opera in the subway . WAZ, June 24, 2009
  4. Eichbaum Opera . Project description of the state initiative StadtBauKultur NRW
  5. Description of the mural ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) urbikon.com
  6. Eichbaum countdown

Coordinates: 51 ° 26 '4.6 "  N , 6 ° 56" 15.4 "  E