KleOPERtra | home

concept

"KleOPERtra" is an intercultural opera project for children in which an opera and accompanying workshops for school classes are to be realised.

The musicians from the Arabic Music Institute AMIBerlin and Stella Maris Barockensemble under the artistic direction of soprano Juliane Schubert are involved.

The aim is to inspire a young audience for baroque and Arabic music and to let them experience in their own artistic process how the language of music is able to build cultural bridges.

Trailer

Video: Simon Hertling

opera production

In the newly developed musical theatre piece, the narrator "Achillas", supreme Egyptian general, takes the children on a journey into the past.
He tells the story of Cleopatra and Caesar's encounter from his own personal perspective. In the intriguing power struggles of antiquity, Achillas stained his hands with blood and has been pondering his life in the realm of the dead ever since. A colourful little bird joins him and a philosophical conversation about life, death, revenge, forgiveness and universal love ensues.

Arias and baroque instrumental movements from the Handel opera "Giulio Cesare in Egitto" were chosen to musically translate the encounter of cultures in the opera and were contrasted and enriched with traditional and modern Arabic music.
In a constant musical dialogue, the styles merge more and more in the course of the piece and thus form a common musical language. To achieve this, the musicians from the Stella Maris Baroque Ensemble, who play the original sound on historical instruments, and their colleagues from the Arabic Music Institute Berlin, who play and teach the traditional Arabic instruments with virtuosity, enter into a creative process of musical exchange and improvisation in order to create something new together.

Alongside Achillas' narratives, accompanied by the delicate sounds of the oud in a fairytale-like manner, the events come to life in musical images. The characters of the story are embodied by singers and dancers and played, sung and danced from different perspectives in the space. The audience sits on cushions in the middle of the action. The changing focus is visually supported by imaginative light projections. These immerse the existing scenery in a new light so that artistic worlds come to life. This fires the imagination and allows young and old to immerse themselves fully in the story and music.

The play is designed for primary school children in terms of content and length and is to be premiered at an inspiring venue in Berlin.

workshops

In the run-up to the performance, workshops for school classes are planned, in which the children themselves become creative and prepare for the opera visit.
They playfully learn about the speciality of the baroque and Arabic instruments and the two musical styles and invent their own musical pieces in child-friendly improvisation units.

Based on the opera, they philosophise about the themes of power, revenge, forgiveness and love and transfer this to their own lifeworld in order to write their own personal story together. With the help of music, art and media educators, they translate this into music and shadow theatre and create an animated music video.

The results of all participating classes will be brought together with impressions from the opera production in a "musical picture book". In it, the stories and silhouette pictures created in the workshops can be seen and the plot and characters of the opera are introduced. Lovingly inserted QR codes in the illustration provide a link to the music videos they produced themselves and give a vivid impression of the children's artistic creative process.