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© Nico Brausch
Peter And The Wolf
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January 2025  | ||||||
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Young Peter has lots of fun with his animal friends and is not at all afraid of the big wolf that wanders around in the woods.
This is despite the fact that his grandfather always warns him to be careful. One day, however, the wolf manages to eat the little duck. Even before the hunters intervene, brave and clever Peter and his friend, the little bird, devise a plan to catch the wolf...
“When he saw the duck, the bird flew down onto the grass, sat down next to the duck, shrugged his shoulders and said: 'What kind of bird are you that you can't fly?'”- Excerpt from "Peter and the Wolf"
It all began with a simple idea: in 1936, Natalija Saz, the director of the Central Children's Theater in Moscow, asked Sergei Prokofiev for a musical fairy tale that not only told a story, but also explained the instruments of a symphony orchestra. The rest is (musical) history: Peter and the Wolf is still one of the most popular programs used by orchestras and theaters around the world to creatively familiarize children with classical music. At NEST, the classic can now be experienced as a ballet in a new choreography by Martin Schläpfer.
About the choreography
Martin Schläpfer, Ballet Director and Chief Choreographer of the Vienna State Ballet, is creating a piece for the Youth Company of the Vienna State Opera Ballet Academy for the second time. With his choreography to Peter and the Wolf, he adds a new level to the musical fairy tale - that of movement. A visual world is created on stage from the sound images of the orchestra using the language of ballet. The dancers of the Youth Company follow the choreographer into the forest in his own version of Prokofiev’s classic, in which the story of Peter and the Wolf is told as a story about humans and animals full of humor and magic, but also as an exploration of our interaction with nature and other living creatures.
About the music
With his composition Peter and the Wolf, Sergei Prokofiev created a true masterpiece in 1936 that was able to creatively familiarize children with classical music. The work was commissioned by Natalija Saz, the director of the Central Children's Theater in Moscow at the time, who wanted a musical fairy tale that not only told a story accompanied by music, but also explained the instruments of a symphony orchestra. Prokofiev, who also wrote the text for the narrator of the story, assigned the characters their own leitmotifs and instruments, which recur throughout the piece. Peter, for example, sounds cheerful and adventurous through the violins, the bird through the chirping flute, the thoughtful and grumpy grandfather through the low bassoon... To this day, Peter and the Wolf has lost none of its popularity, is played with enthusiasm by the greatest theaters and orchestras and is equally well received by audiences.
Program and cast
Duration: 40 minutes, no intermission
NEST - New State Opera
Can the Vienna State Opera be reinvented? Perhaps, but it can - and must - be constantly rethought. Rethinking it means making it even more diverse, even more inviting, even more open. You can think of it as an additional venue, a place created especially for children, young people, young adults and families. And it is precisely this idea that we will realize on 7 December 2024.
On this day, a new state opera house will open with its own very rich program - around 100 events on stage in the first season and 80 dates for a wide variety of workshops, for creating, discussing and getting to know each other. A place for everyone who is young and curious - or has remained so! - and want to get involved in something that can be life-changing. In other words, new music theater in its most diverse forms and ramifications, accessible to everyone without any barriers.
It has long been clear that such a venue is needed. Even such a large repertoire house as the Vienna State Opera, with its uniquely broad international offering, reaches its limits when it comes to expanding its repertoire. The Haus am Ring already stages well over 300 performances every season, and it is hardly possible to add substantially more in one house. And if you are really serious about a comprehensive, consistent and continuous program for the younger generations, then you need more than a few additional performances of the notoriously sold-out children's and youth operas. A younger audience is also entitled to an appropriate offering, and not in order to attract the much-vaunted audience of tomorrow, but because the State Opera wants to be there for everyone and every generation has the right to its own theater.
But being serious also means that the new venue should really "play all the tunes". Acoustically as well as technically and spatially. In other words: a real theater, with a stage, orchestra pit, dressing rooms and everything else that goes with it. Many a place has been tested in recent years, some things would only have been possible with almost unimaginable effort, others would not have allowed the artistic freedom we are talking about. It was therefore extraordinarily fortunate that a suitable venue was found not far from the Vienna State Opera, in the Künstlerhaus - and with it a patron who made the project possible in the first place.
What followed was the happiness of planning, dreaming and conceptualizing. Gradually, a musical theater landscape emerged in which Peter and the Wolf meets Twilight of the Gods and Karl Kraus meets the Turkish pop star Gaye Su Akyol. In between, theater maker Jan Lauwers, the opera school, workshops, Georg Nigl & Nikolaus Ofczarek, Nick-Martin Sternitzke, dance karaoke and the young Austrian composer Hannah Eisendle. We have set out to cover as much ground as possible, to offer a program for schools as well, to invite people to watch and participate, to encourage reflection and celebration. Ideally, the program will develop an irresistible pull that draws you into the world of musical theater. And: our first program already offers more premieres and first performances than ever before in a season in the 150-year history of the Haus am Ring.
Our theatrical dreams are now becoming reality. And, we hope, also part of your reality!
ABOUT THE BUILDING
HISTORY
- The Wiener Künstlerhaus was built on Karlsplatz between 1865 and 1868 - at the same time as the Ringstrasse was opened as a prestigious boulevard by Emperor Franz Joseph I (1865) and the Vienna State Opera was completed as the Imperial and Royal Court Opera (1869). Court Opera was completed (1869)
- In 1881, the "French Hall" was added to the Künstlerhaus to accommodate the First International Art Exhibition
- This so-called "French Hall" was used in a variety of ways until 2017 - the Vienna State Opera performed here in 1987 for the Austrian premiere of The White Rose by Udo Zimmermann
- From 2023, the "Französischer Saal" was extensively renovated to enable opera performances to be staged here
- Among other things, two basement floors were built to create more space for the audience and artists!
- A workshop room was built on the 3rd floor
REACH US BY
Adress: Nest- New State Opera In The Künstlerhaus, Karlsplatz 5, 1010 Vienna
SUBWAY: U1, U4, Karlsplatz
STREETCAR: 1, 2, D, 62, 71, Badner Bahn, Karlsplatz
BUS: 4A, 59A, Karlsplatz
LOCAL RAILROAD: Badner Bahn, Karlsplatz
© Nico Brausch
© Nico Brausch
© Nico Brausch
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