Conductor

In the context of Mittwoch aus Licht, Titus Engel, for his first concert as conductor-in-residence, connects the musical worlds of Stockhausen and Wagner. Both composers not only shaped the music of their time, but they also polarised opinion, both aesthetically and socially. A mystical aura still surrounds both; religion of art and classical heroic epic are the central elements of their two late works. A few days before the premiere of Mittwoch, the second act of Donnerstag offers insights into another day of the week-long opera cycle. As a purely instrumental section, Michael’s journey around the world traces a hero’s path culminating in his ascension to Heaven. The parallels to Parsifal’s journey, profoundly influenced by Wagner’s affinity for religious spirituality, are evident. John Cage's piece 4′33″ serves as a link and prelude to the quasi-sacred atmosphere, having revolutionised listening through the establishment of the musical pause as a sonic space. The concert marks the opening of the thematic focus on Stockhausen and Cage, co-curated by Titus Engel.

Symphony Concert: Light on Parsifal

Deutsche Oper Berlin

The season opener is dedicated to natural phenomena: their effects on our world and its inhabitants are as fascinating as they are unpredictable. In collaboration with the Bern Music Festival, whose theme this year is "Lightning," the concert program will be performed as a guest concert in Bern on September 2nd. Two electrifying works will take center stage. One is James Dillon's "Lightning Strike" from the 1990s, a concerto for flute and orchestra. Following "Crossing" and "Bright Night," it is the concluding work of his "German Triptych"—in which the Scottish composer set to music the idea of ​​enlightenment emerging from darkness.

Tears of Nature Dillon, Šenk, Tan

Kulturzentrum Reitschule

Several curious anecdotes surround the renowned French philosopher Michel Foucault. His LSD trip in Death Valley, California, is legendary: one weekend in 1975, he accepted an invitation from Assistant Professor Simeon Wade. It has now been definitively established that this is no legend. Moreover, this LSD trip profoundly altered Foucault's life and thought.

EPSG:4326

Shattered Worlds / LSD

Stadtcasino Basel

Cologne Philharmonie

Is there a dominant culture? A look to the southeast reveals that intercultural exchange sharpens identities and leads to cultural flourishing. The rich cultural landscape stretching from the Mediterranean through the Near East to the Middle East exemplifies this. The concert program explores this theme, using Jewish and Persian voices as examples. For instance, Tehran still boasts a large Jewish community, a fact reflected in Amen Feizabadi's work.

Identity / Dialogue

Olga Neuwirth is one of the outstanding composers of our time. Together with Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek, she is writing a new piece of music theater. They send two «vampires» – really avatars of themselves – on a journey around the world. They observe the decline of humanity while a tyrannical king and a self-conjuring sea monster fight for power.

Monster's Paradise

Zurich Opera House

Musical theater on the current state of affairs: As avatars of themselves, the exceptional artists Olga Neuwirth and Elfriede Jelinek send two "vampires" on a journey around the world and observe the decline of humanity. But what kind of world is this, one that can only be saved by a monster named Gorgonzilla? Tobias Kratzer stages this brand-new political grotesque as a contemporary Grand Guignol.

Monster’s Paradise

Hamburg State Opera

Kay and Gerta's journey to the Snow Queen and into the depths of the human soul.

The Snow Queen

Semperoper Dresden

What do insect molting and large-scale tree fungi have in common? They follow a clear process, both intoxicating and fragile. Take Stefan Wirth's "Eleusis," for example: Like tree mycelia, which can form a vast fungal network, the orchestra spreads throughout the entire space. The Swiss composer, who teaches in Lucerne, speaks of a "ritual act." A trance-like state is expressly desired.

Rausch / Mushrooms

Philharmonic Essen

Intoxication / Mushrooms

Death has many faces. Appearing as comforter, seducer, sadist. It shines in the dark and hides in the light.

Aribert Reimann’s L’invisible turned three Maeterlinck plays into a poetic meditation on the power of death: L’intruse shows a mother, struggling to survive childbirth. While most of her relatives fail to grasp the seriousness of the situation, her blind grandfather’s the only one to register the arrival of an invisible stranger. Intérieur starts with a young woman’s suicide. Two men, expected to break the news to her family, wonder whether it wouldn’t be kinder to hide the bitter truth. La mort de Tintagiles harks back to a dismal fairy tale: an old Queen lures her grandson Tintagiles back to her kingdom, to murder him. He puts up a fight, helped by his sisters, but vanishes without trace in his grandmother’s mysterious castle.

L’invisible

Oper Frankfurt

A premiere as a stark warning against hatred and repression: The 1972 Olympic Games in Munich were supposed to be a sporting festival in the name of peace. Instead, the catastrophe occurred, eleven Israeli athletes were killed by terrorists. The failure of the security forces and the way the Germans dealt with guilt still have an impact today. In the new opera, the lightness of the play is mixed with anxiety and chaos. The production removes the event from its distance and shows us the ghosts of history in powerful images. The sporting disciplines portrayed in the music and the wild jazz of the Steamboat Switzerland trio, which works together with the orchestra, loosen up the virtuoso time and rhythm structure. Corinna Harfouch is one of the most sought-after German actresses.

Echo 72

Opernplatz

Duke Ellington’s name is almost synonymous with the sound of the big band era. The Deutsche Oper Berlin’s Big Band pays him homage to mark his 125th anniversary: as well as his greatest hits, they will also play the world premiere of the Manfred Honetschläger’s suite “The Famous Duke”.

A Celebration for the „Duke“

Music of the Time - Oceanic Feelings

WDR Funkhaus

What remains of a family whose home keeps disappearing? ? The Relatives follows the family history of composer Sergej Newski. Based on interviews with his grandmother Anna Timofeevna Kravchenko and unique Super 8 recordings from 1968, the result is a multimedia narration across four generations, from 1912 to the present. The form is radical: a video conference between times and augmented reality as a dramaturgic principle. Interviews and documentary materials transform into a conversation that blurs the lines between past and present. Cutting-edge AI morphs live cams and archival materials into one another, not as a technical spectacle but as a way to search for a believable form in which the story can be told. People are shown in a state of seemingly endless, intergenerational flight, maintaining their ethos in the most impossible circumstances. People who do not sacrifice their empathy. People who can laugh and find the most unconventional solutions in their fight for survival. This is an international co-production that asks: How do we remember that which cannot be told? How do we give shape to the act of vanishing?

The Relatives

Performing Olivier Messiaen's last major work was a long-cherished wish of Principal Conductor Titus Engel—so with this concert, we now venture into the "afterlife." As a mammoth work with eleven movements, "Éclairs sur l'au-delà…" not only occupies the entire evening's program but also exceeds the conventional instrumentation of a symphony orchestra. This ambitious project is realized with 50 students from the Basel Academy of Music, who join the Basel Sinfonietta on stage, thus making this formidable ensemble possible.

Beyond Messiaen

Cage and Stockhausen meet in a scenic concert in the historic hall of Hamburg Central Station. In the extensive installation We Make Years Out of Hours by Lithuanian artist Lina Lapelytė, the Zafraan Ensemble – as a satellite of the musical theatre Music of Changes – works with singers from the opera ensemble to weave two of the composers’ works together: Cage’s Hymns and Variations (1979) uses the random thinning of religious hymns to illustrate the path «from something to nothing and back again,» while Stockhausen’s instrumental piece Stop (1965) generates an intense, physical experience of presence and energy from abruptly interrupted sound events. Based on these pieces, the installation itself becomes a score. Perception moves to the centre, the boundaries of listening are shifted – for both composers, the most important exercise for the salvation of humanity.

Music of Many

Contemporary Art National Gallery

Together with the Berlin-based Zafraan Ensemble, the musically playful and versatile theatre artist Thom Luz and Titus Engel, conductor-in-residence at Deutsche Oper Berlin, have created an evening of musical theatre in which John Cage’s work can be experienced in its entirety: from the surprisingly captivating percussion pieces of his early years, through the more contemplative thinning and dissolution harmonies of his middle period, to the sound meditations of his late works, shaped entirely by chance and the initiative of his own interpretation. More than a century after his birth, Cage’s work still contains one of the most radical musical answers to the most pressing question facing our society: How can we create a structure in which the most diverse sounds can coexist without one sound dominating, controlling, suppressing, reinterpreting or even obliterating another? In a performance space somewhere between a concert hall and a musical gymnasium, Cage’s compositions and concepts are performed and brought to life: The audience experiences how Cage’s sonic world order unfolds across the stage and transforms the space. What begins like a classical concert evening reveals itself as a chance-orchestrated founding assembly of a future society that functions entirely according to musical principles: Freedom is the space between five staves, harmony is a form of order that also encompasses incompatibility. The inclusion of chance as a structuring element becomes a comprehensible and captivating encounter for the audience with the possibilities of non-deterministic decision-making: Each performance is a world premiere; no two performances are exactly alike. Thus, a novel portrait of the composer emerges – and a call to action for us, the people of the present: Engage with this resonance and forget the idea of humanity at the centre of power and meaning in creation.

Music of Changes

Where does the image end, where does the sound begin? While film music and live-accompanied silent films have long since clarified their interplay, this concert takes a decisive step further: It combines contemporary video art with contemporary music. Three works not only blur the boundaries between seeing and hearing, but dissolve them entirely.

Video art and music Varèse, Giger, Skljarov

Surrounded by vintage charm and automotive history, the Pantheon becomes the backdrop for a dynamic concert program centered around music and mobility. Because it's not just car enthusiasts who will find something to enjoy: the journey extends beyond the asphalt onto railways and cycle paths.

Kagel, Honegger, Ligeti, Berg, Ragués Pujol, Adams traffic

Pantheon Basel

John Cage founded the Music Circus in 1967, a musical «happening» in which any number of artists appear in one place at the same time. It is an anarchistic community composition where nobody directs and nobody is at the forefront. The audience itself decides what to listen to and where to move. Titus Engel brings together amateur musicians and professionals from Deutsche Oper Berlin to embark on this radical experiment. «Just let as many things as possible happen simultaneously,» wrote Cage. No hierarchy. No fixed result. What happens when everyone plays at the same time? A circus of possibilities, or: What does democracy sound like?

Conductor

Titus Engel

Events

Upcoming events

Oct 9, 2026

Music of the Time - Oceanic Feelings · WDR Sinfonieorchester

Nov 8, 2026

The Relatives · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Nov 28, 2026

Beyond Messiaen · Basel Sinfonietta

5 - 6 Dec, 2026

Music of Many · Deutsche Oper Berlin

5 - 13 Mar, 2027

Music of Changes · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Past events

Sep 8, 2026

Symphony Concert: Light on Parsifal · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Sep 2, 2026

Tears of Nature Dillon, Šenk, Tan · Basel Sinfonietta

Future and recently performed repertoire

Conductor in Violin Concerto by Berg

Basel Sinfonietta

Conductor in Night Creature by Ellington

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Conductor in Parsifal by Wagner

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Conductor in Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum by Messiaen

Basel Sinfonietta

Conductor in A Tone Parallel to Harlem by Ellington

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Conductor in Pacific 231 by Honegger

Basel Sinfonietta

Conductor in Mysteries of the Macabre by Ligeti

Basel Sinfonietta

Conductor in 4′33″ by Cage

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Conductor in Become Ocean by Adams

WDR Sinfonieorchester

Conductor in Cortege by Birtwistle

WDR Sinfonieorchester

Conductor in Archora by Thorvaldsdottir

Basel Sinfonietta

Conductor in The Snow Queen by Abrahamsen

Semperoper Dresden

Conductor in Monster's Paradise by Neuwirth

Opernhaus Zürich

Conductor in Changing by Šenk

Basel Sinfonietta

Conductor in Donnerstag aus Licht by Stockhausen

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Conductor in Lightning strike by Dillon

Basel Sinfonietta

Conductor in Éclairs sur l'Au-Delà... by Messiaen

Basel Sinfonietta

Conductor in Déserts by Varèse

Basel Sinfonietta

Conductor in Blind Audition by Giger

Basel Sinfonietta

Conductor in A breeze: Fleeting action by Kagel

Basel Sinfonietta

Conductor in Car Horn Prelude by Ligeti

Basel Sinfonietta

Conductor in Hofmann in Death Valley by Dick

Basel Sinfonietta

Conductor in Untamed River by Feizabadi

Basel Sinfonietta

Conductor in Seven Valleys of Love by Khayam

Basel Sinfonietta

Conductor in The unconscious is structured like a language by Klartag

Basel Sinfonietta

Conductor in Zamān by Bianchi

Basel Sinfonietta

Conductor in Le Temps et l'Écume by Grisey

Basel Sinfonietta

Conductor in Phaos for Orchestra by Furrer

Basel Sinfonietta

Conductor in Moult by Iannotta

Basel Sinfonietta

Conductor in Eleusis by Wirth

Basel Sinfonietta