In immersive soundscapes, musicians from Ensemble Modern and the Apollo Choir of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden invite the audience to explore the creative and transformative power of melancholic worlds.

Starting with Albrecht Dürer’s engraving Melencolia I, numerous figures and themes are presented on the stage of Melencolia and set in relation to one another: visiting football stadiums and digital cemeteries from the video game “Second Life”, Austrian folk songs, virtuoso instrumental music and Japanese karaoke, AI voice clones and digital guests including the Iranian ney-anbān virtuoso Saeid Shanbehzadeh, Brigitta Muntendorf and Moritz Lobeck go in search of the liberating melancholic mood in a series of seven tableaux.

Tailored for 14 musicians of the Ensemble Modern and accompanied by singers from the Apollo Choir, this work addresses the historical complexities of melancholy – perceived variously as an illness, as a way of overcoming earthly suffering or as the sister of genius. The puzzling polyhedron in Albrecht Dürer’s engraving has become a symbol for these contradictions amid the human desire for salvation. Melencolia combines classical performance with cutting-edge approaches at the intersection of art and technology and transcends the superficially spectacular.

The work has already been recognised for its innovation by becoming the first music theatre piece to receive an Honorary Mention at the Prix Ars Electronica. The commission work of Bregenzer Festspiele and Ensemble Modern will celebrate its German premiere at MaerzMusik 2025 in cooperation with Staatsoper Unter den Linden.