Interview about "Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny"

Next year is Kurt Weill’s 120th birthday. On occasion of this anniversary, Markus Stenz will lead a production of “Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny” with the Dutch National Opera in spring 2020.
“I do think the piece is incredibly relevant in our times,” Markus Stenz said in an interview with bachtrack. “The subject themes are as present today as they were back then, and I’m fully expecting the production to hit that chord. There’s no way you can do an historic version and not be aware of the bridge between our times.”

In this interview, he tells what are the creative decisions he is particularly looking forward to making – and what will be different this time around. “As with most scores I conduct these days, it will be on notation,” he replies. “Weill scores – much more so than some of the contemporary scores of Strauss – are thinly notated. They give you the outlines of music, but the exact sonorities, the principal voices, the harmonic changes or the way you create momentum is not all notated. That is where the personality of the performer kicks in.”

The premiere of this production will be on March 16, 2020 at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

< > more information about the production in Amsterdam

The whole interview with background information about “Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny can be read > online.