Name: Amazônia - School Concert
Start: 2025-11-04T10:00:00
Location: Cologne Philharmonie

Simone Menezes

Camila Provenzale

Gürzenich-Orchester Köln

Chaos, whistles, angry heckles, and even physical altercations: When Igor Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring premiered in Paris in 1913, the audience was outraged by a real scandal. What music, pounding, orgiastic, of almost obscene sensuality! And then there was the subject matter: a pagan ritual celebrating spring and fertility, including the sacrifice of a virgin. Shocking! Often, however, it is precisely the most heated waves that calm down particularly quickly. 

Scandal

Cologne Philharmonie

Lust and desire, gracefulness and abandon, seduction and catastrophe: anyone who gets close to Lulu, who succumbs to the undertow of her charisma, is doomed to die. She seems innocent yet dangerous, an angel and a monster rolled into one. A woman portrayed with almost painfully realistic brushstrokes who is also a projection screen for subconscious fantasies and abysses. Lulu balks at nothing, and all her encounters are fatal – for those she meets. In the end, she herself has fallen, working as a prostitute whose last customer is the serial killer Jack the Ripper … Lulu is Alban Berg’s second opera. In 1928, he began composing it, but interrupted work multiple times, ultimately failing to complete the monumental project: in 1935, his death put a stop to his efforts, and Lulu remained a fragment. Based on texts by Frank Wedekind, the opera is one of the most important works of 20th-century musical drama, and the first to employ twelve-tone technique throughout. Its strict formal construction, however, is always in service to dramatic expression and the uncommonly subtle, colourful characterization of each of the numerous characters on stage – this is one of the secrets behind the success of this masterwork, so influential for 20th-century music.

Sakari Oramo and an exquisite ensemble of soloists take the gripping rollercoaster ride between beauty and feverish nightmares.

Femme fatale

Brazilian photographer and environmental activist Sebastião Salgado has documented the Amazon rainforest in all its beauty and transience. His striking black-and-white images can be experienced on a giant screen – accompanied by Villa-Lobos's powerful Rainforest Suite. Schoolchildren can participate in workshops surrounding this concert, exploring not only the music but also the topic of environmental and species conservation.