Programme Guide

Kurt Weill’s Zaubernacht is a little-performed rarity that was written as a children’s pantomime for the Russian ballet company at the Theater am Kurfürstendamm, where it premiered in 1922. Since only a modest orchestra pit was available at the theatre, Weill limited himself to a small “Mozart orchestra”, as he recounted. “I learned two things from the intense concentration of Russian theatre art: that the stage has its own musical form, whose rules grow organically out of the course of the action, and that the most important things can only be said scenically with the simplest, most discreet means.”

The scenario written by choreographer Vladimir Borich has been lost, but resembled E.T.A. Hoffmann’s tale The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, which Tchaikovsky made famous in his Nutcracker ballet: a story of dreaming children, a fairy and toys that come to life – including a quarrelsome jumping jack and a wild rocking horse.

Under the direction of Simon Rössler, members of the Berliner Philharmoniker present Kurt Weill’s Magic Night in a colourful production by Nelly Dankert, with spectacular acrobatics provided by the members of BERLINJOHN. The cast also includes soprano Ruth Rosenfeld, a long-time ensemble member of the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz.