Sanssouci – Premiere

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Date: February 22, 2019
Time: 12:00 am - 12:00 am
Location: Nationaltheater Mannheim, Germany

An evening of Opera and Dance with Music by Arash Safaian / J.S.Bach / G.F. Händel.

Choreographie: Stephan Thoss
Musical Director: Matthew Toogood

This year’s orchestra-dance premiere »Sanssouci« pushes the boundaries of its own format and achieves an extraordinary coproduction between Opera and Dance. It spirits the audience away to the Baroque period and gives the works of the great masters Bach and Handel the opportunity to shine. Choreographer Stephan Thoss found his inspiration for the work in a meeting between J. S. Bach and the Prussian King Frederick II at his palace of Sanssouci. The monarch, who was a music enthusiast, played a complex musical theme for Bach and asked him to create a fugue from it on the spot. Bach later developed this »royal theme« into the basis for a renowned composition that became known as the »Musical Offering«. Stephan Thoss develops a very personal view of these musical events against the backdrop of this historic encounter. He investigates the passionate introspection in Bach’s music and juxtaposes it with Handel’s monumental psalm setting »Dixit Dominus« (»The Lord Said«). An array of five-part choir, vocal soloists, and dancers allows exceptional scenes of magnificence and splendor to unfold.