LA PICCOLA CUBANA in LINDEN21
On October 27th - the 10th anniversary of Hans Werner Henze's death - his opera LA PICCOLA CUBANA will be premiered in the staging by Pauline Beaulieu as part of the LINDEN 21 series in the old orchestra rehearsal hall. Adrian Heger will be the musical director.
LA PICCOLA CUBANA tells the turbulent story of variety singer Rachel against the background of social upheavals in pre-revolutionary Cuba. Long after the premiere in 1974, Hans Werner Henze and Hans Magnus Enzensberger discussed a chamber music version of their television opera LA CUBANA, inspired by elements of songplay, which is now being performed in Jobst Liebrecht's setting.
For the composer Hans Werner Henze, who traveled to Cuba himself, the island was a place of longing that inspired him politically and artistically. In the early 1970s, together with Hans Magnus Enzensberger, he conceived the opera "La Cubana oder ein Leben für die Kunst", whose name refers to a multifaceted scenic and musical structure between songplay and music-theatrical grotesque. As a counterpart to the large-scale LA CUBANA, a libretto revision was created under the title LA PICCOLA CUBANA as well as the concertante Songs and Dances from the Operetta La Cubana, which represent the textual and instrumental basis for the arrangement. The libretto is based on the 1969 novel The Song of Rachel by the Cuban writer Miguel Barnet, which is a fictional, documentary-style “witness account” of shifting social conditions. In Rachel's stories, memory and illusion are combined.
Pauline Beaulieu, born in France, studied political science, theater studies and acting at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris and directing at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts. Since 2012 she has been developing different forms of theater in dialogue with performance, installation and music. Her first directorial work included the Cartoucherie in Paris, the Saarländisches Staatstheater, and the Sophiensäle in Berlin. In 2016 she created the performative music theater installation about musical memory for the Munich Biennale, Festival for New Music Theater: Mnemo/scene: Echos. In 2017/18 she worked together with Luk Perceval, first as a co-teacher at the drama school La Manufacture in Lausanne and then as dramaturge and co-author for the adaptation of Mademoiselle Julie at the Comédie de Genève. She also staged an adaptation of Albert Camus's The House of Sleep and The Just at the Jena Theater, an adaptation of Milo Rau's Compassion and a musical evening at the Theater Vorpommern, as well as a scenic adaptation of Lars von Trier's Antichrist at the Theater in Koblenz.
Victoria Randem, who performs the leading role of Rachel, was a member of the International Opera Studio of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden for two years and was accepted as a soloist in the Staatsopernensemble in the 2021/22 season. Here she has already appeared as Ännchen (DER FREISCHÜTZ), Pamina (DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE), Jano (JENŮFA), Marzelline (FIDELIO) and Anna Reich (DIE LUSTER WEIBER VON WINDSOR). In the past season, she also shone in the leading female role in Peter Eötvös' opera SLEEPLESS, which was chosen by the magazine Opernwelt for the premiere of 2022.
The other ensemble includes Ema Nikolovska (Lucile), Andrés Moreno García (Eusebio, Paco), Benjamin Chamandy (Fernrohrvermieter, Don Alfonso, Senator), Susi Wirth (Theaterdirektorin) and Lena Vogt (Federica, Yarini, Estebana). Members of the Staatskapelle Berlin and guests play. Benjamin Schönecker designed the stage design and Veronika Bleffert designed the costumes. Irma van Doornmalen is responsible for the video design, Simone Oestreicher for the lighting and Knut Jürgens for the sound design.