The Aalto Musiktheater in Essen is staging the German premiere of Missy Mazzoli's successful opera in 2025 following its world premiere in Oslo.

Kathrin Conan created a stage concept for Essen that relies on the continuous, immersive use of video projections by Georg Lendorff. The team led by director Anna-Sophie Mahler contrasts the concrete plot of The Listeners, which is set in a provincial American town, with a strong reduction and abstraction. The result is a celebrated staging that also does justice to the philosophical depth and ambivalent nature of the opera.

The video projections by Georg Lendorff are superbly realised and capture the different atmospheres of the piece perfectly. When the humming sound in the orchestra is first heard, the picturesque forest becomes distorted and dissolves into a kind of sound wave. After the catastrophe in the second act, a huge fireball moves towards Claire and the group.

Online Musik Magazin