Antikrist
Trailer Antikrist
Antikrist on NAXOS
DVD available for purchase on NAXOS
Team
Conductor
Stephan Zilias
Director, Set design, Costume design
Ersan Mondtag
Costume design, Costume painting
Annika Lu
Light design
Rainer Casper
Chorus Director
Jeremy Bines
Choreographer
Rob Fordeyn
Dramaturgy
Carolin Müller-Dohle
Cast
Lucifer
Thomas Lehman / Kyle Miller
God’s Voice
Jonas Grundner-Culemann
The Echo of the Air of Mystery
Maria Vasilevskaya
The Air of Mystery
Arianna Manganello
The Mouth speaking Great Words
Thomas Cilluffo
Despondency
Martina Baroni
The Great Whore
Flurina Stucki
The Scarlet Beast
N. N.
The Lie
Thomas Blondelle
Hatred
Philipp Jekal
A Voice
Thomas Lehman / Kyle Miller
Dancers
Ashley Wright, Giorgia Bovo, Ana Dordevic, Sakura Inoue, Vasna Felicia Aguilar, Yuri Shimaoka, Joel Donald Small, Shih-Ping Lin, György Jellinek, Miguel Angel Collado
Chorus
Chor der Deutschen Oper Berlin
Orchestra
Orchester der Deutschen Oper Berlin
For Ersan Mondtag, Langgaard's opera, which heralds a sparking frenzy of doom, is a parable of our times. Socio-political themes such as the fragmentation of society, the hardening of public discourse and the intensifying climate debate shine through in his visually stunning production.
Despite these references, Mondtag's over-aesthetised visual language leaves room for Langgaard's multifaceted and dazzling music, in which large sections are purely orchestral: In Rob Fordeyn's choreography, a group of dancers translates Langgaard's composition into a gripping language of movement. In his expressionist stage aesthetic, Mondtag quotes the visual arts of the time when ANTIKRIST was created and at the same time creates a surreal world in which the laws of physics seem to have been suspended.
In a late capitalist metropolis, the world threatens to collapse - a car falls from the sky, hellish creatures and horror figures populate the stage, society is put to the test and set against each other. The immensely powerful images of the director, who made his Berlin opera debut with ANTIKRIST 2022, are perfect for Langgaard's end-time mystery in their imaginative exaggeration.
Photo credit: Thomas Aurin