Novoflot, Max Czollek, Michael Wertmüller
Picture: Falko Siewert
Novoflot presents the latest part of its Arnold Schönberg cycle. The music theatre production ‘A Murdered from Warsaw’, conceived together with the Berlin author Max Czollek and the Swiss composer Michael Wertmüller, takes an unusual and extremely contemporary look at the melodrama ‘A Survivour from Warsaw’ by Arnold Schönberg, composed in 1947.
With “A Survivor from Warsaw”, Arnold Schönberg addressed the suppression of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto. The composition is a harrowing testimony to the most brutal dehumanisation and one of the few works of music to specifically address the Holocaust. 75 years after the premiere, Novoflot is rewriting the composition against the backdrop of historical and current war and expulsion scenarios as part of its multi-part Schönberg project (‘Die Harmonielehre’). The libretto was written by the Berlin author Max Czollek, whose publications (including ‘Desintegriert euch’) have repeatedly triggered far-reaching social debates. The composer is Michael Wertmüller, enfant terrible of international contemporary music and closely associated with the work of Novoflot for many years. ‘A Murdered Man from Warsaw’ is a music theatre hybrid that constantly realigns itself between opera, drama, installation and concert. In addition to the British singer Rosemary Hardy, the Israeli contralto Noa Frenkel and the Japanese dancer Ichi Go, the librettist Max Czollek will also be appearing as a live performer.