With a costume parade and party: Deutsche Oper is calling for the opening weekend – it’s going to happen

Tiravanija, who had a major exhibition in the Gropius Bau in 2023, is organizing the opening weekend of the Deutsche Oper. He was invited by the new director of the house, Aviel Cahn.

Operas have the image of being elitist, despite many attempts to open them up and offer them to children. Tiravanija is the right man to push the door open a little further.

He is an expert in the art of encounters. As an artist with Thai roots, anchored in the Southeast Asian tradition, his works are neither about objects nor about exhibiting anything. Living, cooking, eating, playing, spending time in the museum – this is what the artist, born in 1961, is known for.

Under his curation, the opening weekend of the Deutsche Oper is explicitly aimed at everyone. It doesn’t matter whether you love Verdi or have an opinion about Stockhausen. The main thing is to spend time in the opera, which sees Tiravanija as a living organism.

The house on Bismarckstrasse is open for 30 hours. And not just the auditorium, stage and foyer, but also workshops, offices, kitchens and technical rooms. Tiravanija has activated 20 artists from its extensive Berlin network to play in the rooms.

The house changes because of the people

He himself has become known for his Pad Thai, an Asian noodle dish that he prepares in exhibition spaces, galleries and museums and eats with the public. He also wants to cook in Berlin. What exactly is not revealed. However, he has long since emancipated himself from Pad Thai. Tiravanija has been teaching at Columbia University for years, he carries out his social experiments in large institutions around the world, he doesn’t like being in the spotlight himself, preferring to support his students and other artists.

There are names from the Berlin art scene in Berlin who are currently enjoying successful international careers. For example, Sung Tieu, a Berliner with Vietnamese roots, who is currently in the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. She will show a sound installation where bureaucracy and the Tannhäuser Overture come together.

The artist, composer and musician Ari Benjamin Meyers initiates pop-up concerts with the musicians of the opera orchestra. And there’s a nightly rave on stage. You can dance until four in the morning. Afterwards it’s time to chill out with piano music in the foyer.

Tiravanija has himself designed stage sets for operas and he has brought artists on board who have similar experiences. Petrit Halilaj recently staged an opera in rural Kosovo, which also stopped off at the Hamburger Bahnhof.

Halilaj will organize a parade with his partner, the artist Alvaro Urbano. Around 300 costumes from the opera’s collection will be available, including garments from “The 3 Puzzles” or “Rosenkavalier”. The audience can slip into the costumes. Dressed in this way, the procession will move along Bismarckstrasse and through the Charlottenburg neighborhood, musically accompanied by choir members and a trumpeter. Finally, the costumes are assembled into a sculpture in the opera foyer.

The artist and olfactory researcher Sissel Tolass has created her own scents that she will spread throughout the house. Poet in Residence Fiston Mwanza Mujila will perform poems and ask Deutsche Oper employees to share their personal stories with the house.

Aviel Cahn begins his directorship at the Deutsche Oper this season – and he wants to do a few things differently. He has appointed a trio of conductors instead of a general music director; he promotes cross-border work and wants to open up to the city’s independent scene. He would like to maintain the Deutsche Oper’s huge repertoire and at the same time shine with new productions.

“In the opera, we deal probably 90 percent with material by artists who are no longer alive. That’s why it’s a benefit for me to work with contemporary artists who are used to creating something new every day,” said Cahn in an interview on the occasion of the start of the season.

His predecessor Dietmar Schwarz also enjoyed working a lot with visual artists at the house, having them exhibited in the foyer or bringing them in as librettists or set designers. Cahn continues this. When a large house like the Deutsche Oper makes its resources available to artists from various disciplines, not only the opera and the audience benefit, but also the city’s art scene.