Composition Commission issued to Felix Leuschner

Staatstheater Kassel, Germany

Einbruch mehrerer Dunkelheiten for orchestra, electronics and singers is a work of music theatre being written for the Staatstheater Kassel and made possible by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.

The name of the composition refers to electromagnetic phenomena and their historical impact on mankind. In them culminates the question of human agency. Presented as a continuous narrative departing from the non-synchronistic inner story, the work oscillates between opera, thriller and political plot as stage action featuring voices, persons and presences. It contains elements of the real German arms industry and military history between the First World War and the transatlantic alliance, events surrounding the industrialization of the 20th century and the West German arms industry. While not explicitly a regional play – its external plot is also a kind of reflection of the city of Kassel as a magnifier of these political issues, as a locus of far-right attacks and murders, a center of the German arms industry, a site of the economic miracle, and a city once located on the border between East and West Germany and now forming the country’s geographic center. 

Due to current situation there might be changes at short notice. For most recent information please visit staatstheater-kassel.de