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The making of Berlin

Berlin
Sun 4 May / 21:00
Sun 4 May ’25
21:00

Het Vlaamse theatergezelschap Berlin maakte met The making of Berlin een voorstelling, die een mix is van documentaire, theater en muziek. Het is een portret van Berlijn in de tweede wereldoorlog, gebouwd rond het uitzonderlijke verhaal van een oude Duitser, die toen werkte als orkestregisseur bij de Berliner Philharmoniker en betrokken was bij een uitzonderlijk nooit uitgevoerd project. 

De geniale theaterfilm The making of Berlin overdondert van begin tot eind.

★★★★★ De Standaard

The making of Berlin is a portrait of a city. It is built around the extraordinary story of Friedrich Mohr, a Berliner who was the Berliner Philharmoniker’s stage manager during WWII.

A play with film and live horn music in which BERLIN performs the technical tour de force as initially planned, 75 years after the events of the war. With Friedrich Mohr himself, the orchestra of Opera Ballet Vlaanderen and German actor Martin Wuttke (Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds).

BERLIN helps Mohr to realize an as yet unfulfilled dream. At the end of WWII, the conductor of the Philharmonic decided to perform Siegfried’s Funeral March from Wagner’s Götterdämmerung one last time. The performance would be broadcast live on German state radio. Rehearsing with the entire orchestra in one location soon proved too dangerous due to ongoing bombing. So the conductor divided the orchestra into seven segments and had them rehearse in separate bunkers. Faltering (recording) technology threw a spanner in the works.

Mohr’s ultimate wish is to perform the technical tour de force as initially planned seventy-five years after the date. The Götterdämmerung will be played from seven bunkers simultaneously and can be heard in its entirety on the radio. A daring feat for which BERLIN called on, among others, radio station Klara, the orchestra of Opera Ballet Vlaanderen and German actor Martin Wuttke (known from Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds).

Let op: locatie Theater aan het Spui
Spui 187
2511 BN Den Haag

Theatre- and film-maker Fien Leysen records the creation process for a behind-the-scenes documentary. Her footage eventually ends up in the performance as well. Together with BERLIN, you gradually discover that Mohr’s story is full of inaccuracies and that he seems to want to restore the irreparable.

How far can you stretch the truth when you’re looking for atonement?
The making of Berlin offers an unfiltered look at BERLIN’s work process. But above all, it tells the story of one of the ‘unbrave’ who failed to stand up when fellow Jewish musicians and friends were expelled from the orchestra.

It is the final part of the Holocene cycle, during which BERLIN made several portraits of cities over the past twenty years.