Sisters in spirit

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Musical dates
Title: Sisters in spirit
Original language: German
Music: Thomas Zaufke
Lyrics: Peter Lund
Premiere: March 13, 2014
Place of premiere: Berlin, Neukölln Opera
Place and time of the action: Berlin today and England in the Victorian era

Sisters in the Spirit is a musical by Peter Lund (text) and Thomas Zaufke (music) and was created as a co-production of the Berlin University of the Arts and the Neukölln Opera . The topic of emancipation is told in parallel on the one hand by three young women in today's Berlin and on the other by three pastors' daughters who lived in England during the Victorian Age , which takes a musical journey through time.

content

The 18-year-old Berlin students Milly and Aydin are about to graduate from high school. The two young women don't seem to have anything more in common: Milly tries to enjoy life to the fullest, and attending techno parties, consuming designer drugs and non-committal sex are expressions of her personal freedom and her apparently self-determined life; she ignores the opportunities that graduation would give her. Aydin, on the other hand, fears that she will not be able to finish her high school diploma because she is facing an arranged marriage with her cousin from Bursa , whom she does not even know. Aydin would like to decide about her life for herself, because for her love means the right to self-determination , but she doesn't really know whether her father's attempts might help her to find a good man rather than one to search on your own. The two very different attitudes of the two students repeatedly trigger fierce arguments and criticism of the other's way of life; Conversations that her teacher Lotte Birkner does not tolerate in class, because she is annoyed by the debates about feminism and emancipation and would rather direct the interest of her students to the subject matter dealt with in class: the literary work of the three Brontë sisters .

The novels and letters left for posterity by the pastors' daughters Charlotte, Anne and Emily Brontë, who lived in England during the Victorian Age, are considered to have paved the way for emancipation. Almost cut off from the rest of the big world, they write about the significance of the fixed role of women in civil society and about their visions of how it could be otherwise. In order to be accepted by publishers, the Brontë sisters have to give themselves male pseudonyms. After their publication, the books are hotly debated by the English public because of the progressive portrayal of the fate of women, and even his own brother Branwell, who tries himself to be a writer, is shocked when he realizes his sisters' ambitious coup attempts.

Anne , Emily and Charlotte Brontë, painted by their brother Branwell (ca.1834).

Reading the Brontë works reveals to the pupils and their teacher that they are engaged in the same discourse that already haunted the pioneers of bourgeois society in Victorian England in the middle of the 19th century: What the Brontë sisters left behind for posterity in their novels and letters , is suddenly and surprisingly topical, and the three Berlin women increasingly identify with the individual sisters. The young women of today and here and the three long-dead writers all become “sisters in spirit” .

Anyone who knows the history of the Brontës knows how their life ends: the siblings die young, but leave behind world literature that must be seen as the trailblazer for emancipation. Addicted to opium and alcohol, and full of despair over his own lack of genius, his brother dies first of tuberculosis. Shortly afterwards he is followed by Emily, the second youngest sister, and a year later also by Anne. After the death of all her siblings, Charlotte Brontë gives up the utopia of freedom and self-determination and marries the honest Vicar Arthur Nicholls, who urges her to stop writing.

In today's Berlin, too, the story of emancipation ends with a series of gains in knowledge rather than a "happy ending". Milly realizes that as a woman of today she doesn't have to take a high school diploma in order to be able to lead a life according to her own ideas, especially not when learning is just not what you want. Aydin, who has almost given up her own dreams and desire for self-fulfillment, is even encouraged by her future husband to graduate from high school. While looking at the life plans of her two students, teacher Lotte realizes that her own life is not as self-determined as she believed and that other women have not been emancipated in the form that she would like to see: every woman has to be different Weigh up freedoms against each other and decide for yourself individually which facets of emancipation you live.

reception

In Schwestern's spirit, the author of the musical places two pieces next to each other: one is set in the mid-19th century, the other is a mirror image in the present, in what appears to be a much more liberated world. The main connecting theme of the double piece "that mirrors the layers of time" is called self-realization, whereby the connection to the past is created by the fact that the author has a teacher introduce her two students to the texts of the Brontë sisters, and the process of reading becomes "togetherness -Play ”of the historical and the contemporary characters, whereby he “ brings a bygone time into the present in a refreshing way. ”

The 19th century, in which the Brontë sisters lived, “was not a good time for young women. Access to education had few, and one's own life had a girl hardly decide. " The three priests daughters, " which stays away in the verzopften, high-buttoned emotional world of the Victorians the air we breathe " and " looking through the letter the clearance " are juxtaposed young Berliners, for whom free access to education is by no means a guarantee of self-realization. Together they act - mostly time-shifted and placed diametrically - in front of a uniform backdrop: a huge school blackboard with handwritten manuscript lines from Brontë's works. The actors move in front of and between this black and white abstraction. The Brontë sisters in particular transcend these lines, because they describe their other home as "a crypt, wet and without light, where nothing grows."

The musical spectrum of the musical ranges from lively shanty tunes and folk songs (such as a revision of the song "The water is wide") to pieces of music that are almost hit and miss to "dissonant spiced music" for the background tragic moments.

premiere

Sisters in the Spirit was written especially for graduates of the Berlin University of the Arts, at which author and director Peter Lund is a professor. The musical, which the author of the play himself subtitles as a musical journey through time , premiered on March 13, 2014 in the Neukölln Opera in Berlin.

Ensemble of the first and second seasons (Berlin-Cast)

March 13th to April 25th, 2014

Resumption November 27, 2014

occupation

Actresses

orchestra

  • Katja Reinbold (flute / transverse flute)
  • Christian Vogel / Max Teich (clarinet / bass clarinet)
  • Max Nauta (double bass)
  • Christin Dross / Sibylle Strobel (violin)
  • Anja-Susann Hammer (violoncello)

List of songs

first act

  • Time space place
  • You are stupid / Moritat I.
  • envy
  • The water is wide
  • Angria
  • Storm on the heath
  • Don't tell me anything
  • The advertising
  • Free choice
  • say yes

Second act

  • Scandalous success
  • Free choice II
  • God sees everything
  • Finally it doesn't matter
  • Fulfilled wishes
  • Morality II
  • The jug goes to the water
  • Say yes II
  • Tell about yourself

Press reviews

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Premiere dates of the Neukölln Opera in the first half of 2014 (accessed: December 13, 2014) ( Memento from December 25, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ In conversation: Peter Lund on "Sisters in the Spirit. A Musical Journey through Time": Peter Lund undertakes a musical journey through time in the Neukölln Opera (TIP Online on March 12, 2014)
  3. ↑ Theater & Stage: Sisters in the Spirit, TIP Online (accessed: March 13, 2014) ( Memento of the original from March 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.tip-berlin.de
  4. ↑ Udo Badelt: Down from the storm heights Tagesspiegel Online, March 17, 2014
  5. ↑ Peter Lund in conversation with Anja Caspary ( Memento of the original from March 18, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. radioeins RBB, March 13, 2014 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.radioeins.de
  6. ↑ Udo Badelt: Down from the storm heights Tagesspiegel Online, March 17, 2014
  7. ↑ Preface to: Peter Lund in conversation with Anja Caspary ( Memento of the original from March 18, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. radioeins RBB, March 13, 2014 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.radioeins.de
  8. ↑ Udo Badelt: Down from the storm heights Tagesspiegel Online, March 17, 2014
  9. ↑ Thomas Zaufke in an interview with Andreas Wurm zibb, March 11, 2014, announcement of the premiere
  10. ↑ Peter Lund in conversation with Anja Caspary ( Memento of the original from March 18, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. radioeins RBB, March 13, 2014 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.radioeins.de
  11. ↑ Udo Badelt: Down from the storm heights Tagesspiegel Online, March 17, 2014
  12. ↑ ensemble loud Programmheft- and poster of Neukölln Opera to pieces
  13. ↑ - ( Memento of the original from December 13, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / neukoellneroper.de

Web links