The Mannheim Summer is an international festival for music and theater from Mozart to the present day, which takes place every two years, alternating with the Schiller Festival. It ranges from Mozart to pop, from Asia to Europe and America, from garden parties to nightclubs and from music machines to grand opera.
When was the last time you celebrated? Was it a while ago? - No wonder, because the world is constantly becoming more digital and faster. Personal encounters have become rare in many areas of life. What does that do to us? And what about the endangered form of government that was born in Athenian marketplaces, from physical interaction, from the theater: democracy? The Mannheim Summer takes a very practical approach to this question by making the "festival" the focus of the program in 2024. The festival has been a basic form of human behavior since time immemorial. Festivals help to overcome the conflicts and boundaries of everyday life. A moment of ecstasy, of supernatural experience, is inherent in the festival. It is the time-out of reason, the necessary counterpart to enlightenment, the utopia for one night. Is it too much to say that art also springs from the festival? We believe that every concert, every opera, every performance retains a trace element of this archaic origin.
The spirit of the festival between nature and culture is impressively immortalized in a palace complex like Schwetzingen. The main part of the Mannheim Summer will take place here in 2024 with its rich program from Mozart to the present day. Open-air concerts, performances, masked balls, international guest performances and the new production of Mozart's "Don Giovanni" will set strong accents in the palace theater and park. But it will also be summer again in Mannheim. At the Studio Werkhaus, we will be presenting a program focusing on Albert Camus' fascinating novel "The Stranger". After two limited editions due to the pandemic, the organizers want to dedicate the Mannheim Summer 2024 to life and art again without restrictions.
Here are some highlights:
Don Giovanni by W. A. Mozart
Don Giovanni or Don Juan: a name that has left a deep mark on cultural history. Seducer, bon vivant, philosopher, perfect lover - and, if you take a closer look at him today, an exemplary anti-hero due to his vices: rapist, murderer, liar, exploiter, swindler - with whom we surprisingly also feel sympathy. A criminal who had the temerity to invite the statue of the man he murdered to dinner! He made just one mistake: He hadn't counted on an acceptance. This work, celebrated as the "opera of all operas", rounds off the Mozart-Da Ponte cycle in a co-production with the National Theatre Prague. The opera, which Mozart himself premiered at the conductor's podium in Prague in 1787, has already been staged at the National Theatre Prague by the team led by the Norwegian-Swedish director Alexander Mørk-Eidem. The premiere at the Schlosstheater Schwetzingen marks the start of the Mannheim Summer 2024.
June 27 to July 18, 2024
RE-CREATION
Concert with Konstantin Gropper (Get Well Soon), Ziggy Has Ardeur & the National Theater Orchestra
Nature and music - a major theme. The sublime as a category between beauty and horror has been a source of musical genius since Haydn's "Creation" or Mendelssohn's "Hebrides Overture". At the same time, this music reminds us that today it is usually not nature that threatens man, but rather man that threatens nature. The pop music of Mannheim-based Ziggy Has Ardeur and Konstantin Gropper - singer of the band "Get Well Soon" - is also familiar with this shudder-inducing feeling. In their fascinating orchestral composition "Rhizom" for the Federal Horticultural Show, they explore our relationship with the mysterious world of plants in a powerful way.
All of this is reason enough for the Mannheim Summer Festival to stage an open-air concert in Schwetzingen Palace Park that ranges from classical perfection of form to the sounds of film music and Gropper's casual baritone.
June 28, 2024
Konstantin Gropper © Jens Oellermann
"The Stranger" chamber opera by Cecilia Arditto Delsoglio and Annette Müller
A poetic world of voices, noises, instrumental sounds, fans and water bowls? Composer Cecilia Arditto was the winner of the 2020 composition competition for new chamber operas based on Albert Camus' novel "The Stranger". She reads Camus' key novel about life in the age of the absurd as a kind of score in which the real thing is always between the lines: The sun, the heat, the smells, the sea. "The one who had stabbed Raymond looked at him without saying anything. The other blew on a small flute and, while looking at us, kept repeating the three notes he could get out of his instrument. All this time there was nothing but the sun and this silence with the soft murmur of the spring and the three notes." Together with co-director Annette Müller, Cecilia Arditto Delsoglio will turn the story of the completely indifferent Algerian-Frenchman Meursault, his girlfriend Marie, the petty criminal Raymond and a completely incomprehensible murder of an Algerian into an intimate drama of sounds.
June 30 to July 13, 2024
Landscape music
Music trail with concerts and workshops in the palace park
Do you know Schwetzingen Palace Park? If so, then we don't need to tell you about the incredible beauty of the avenues and borders, the abundance of sculptures, the impressive sightlines. There is only one thing missing from this Palatinate Versailles on Mannheim's doorstep: music!
And that's exactly what the traditional landscape music festival as part of the Mannheim Summer is all about. The program ranges from instrumental music, string quartets, brass canzonas and harp sounds to French chansons or a version of "Die Schöne Müllerin" with accordion. Added to this are the festival's exciting sound installations and performances: a rich program that takes you to the most diverse corners of the castle park. And at the same time, special workshops offer the chance to learn how climate change is affecting the castle garden or how winegrowers in the region produce sustainable, ecological and yet delicious wine - an afternoon to enjoy and reflect on.
July 6, 2024
Orchestra karaoke
The "Orchesterkaraoke" from Hamburg is characterized by its unpredictable potential for mass euphoria and ecstasy. The event, which now also has a long tradition at the Nationaltheater Mannheim, draws on two sources of inspiration: the literal translation of the word karaoke (= empty orchestra) and a small poster on the wall of a run-down Hamburg bar with the words: "We believe that social change begins with singing in a choir."
The principle behind this extremely entertaining art project by Matthias v. Hartz could not be simpler. Under the baton of festival director Jan Dvořák, the orchestra rehearses various karaoke-style pop songs from Sinatra to Billie Eilish, visitors choose their song and then sing it with symphony orchestra accompaniment. This is probably the greatest singing experience of an amateur singer's life and probably the most generous offer of accompaniment ever made by a cultural institution. - Directly after the landscape music!
July 6, 2024
