Johannes Brahms’s ‘German Requiem’
is performed at the Süreyya Opera House
on October 11
Süreyya Opera House (Süreyya Operası)
Caferağa Mah., General Asım Gündüz Cad. (formerly Bahariye Cad.) No. 29, Kadıköy, 34710 Istanbul
Tel: +90 216 346 15 31
The ticket office at the Opera House is open from 12.00 to 17.00 and from 18.00 to 20.00 on Thursdays when there are concerts on that day.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 03
FRIDAY OCTOBER 09
Mozart’s ‘The Abduction from the Seraglio’
Members of the Istanbul State Opera and Ballet Company perform Mozart’s three-act opera ‘The Abduction from the Seraglio’ (Saraydan Kız Kaçırma), K 384, the original title of which was Die Entführung aus dem Serail. The plot concerns the hero Belmonte’s attempt to rescue his beloved Constanze from the palace of Pasha Selim; in this, it loosely refers to the North African Barbary corsairs’ practice of hijacking ships belonging to Christian states, kidnapping the crew and passengers, and demanding ransom. Mozart’s opera was written to be performed by an opera company that had been set up by the Austrian Emperor Joseph II and was intended to encourage the composition and performance of operas in the German language at a time when Italian operas were all the rage. In actual fact, Die Entführung aus dem Serail is not an opera, but a singspiel, which differs from an opera in that there are no recitatives; instead, the action is carried forward mostly by spoken dialogue, the libretto being by Johann Gottlieb Stephanie. In these performances, the conductor is Zdravko Lazarov (the chorus having been trained by Paolo Villa) and the director Caner Akın.
20.00
Saturday, October 03
Tickets from Biletinial
Prices: Sold out
Event website
Friday, October 09
Tickets from Biletinial
Prices: Sold out
Event website
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 11
Coffee Concert: Café Mélange
First, the Istanbul Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Hakan Şensoy, play Sibelius’s 1902 Impromptu for Strings, Opus 5, originally written for string orchestra and female choir. They then accompany the South Korean pianist Choah Kim in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9 in E flat major, K 271 (a work dating from 1777, when the composer was 21). Finally, the orchestra play Tchaikovsky’s 1884 Elegie, commissioned by the Moscow Society of Artists in honour of the actor Ivan Samarin, and Mozart’s Divertimento in D major, K 136, written in Salzburg in 1772 following two extended periods in Italy.
The Coffee Concerts at this venue are sponsored by Kurukahveci Mehmet Efendi, Turkey’s leading purveyor of coffee.
Tickets from Mobilet
Prices: 742.50TL, 649.00TL
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 11
Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem
The Istanbul Europe Choir (İstanbul Avrupa Korosu), now nearly 60 years old, sings Brahms’s German Requiem (‘Ein Deutsches Requiem’), Opus 45, accompanied on the piano by Güliz Tekelioğlu and Ozan Zencir. The soloists are Ceren Aydın (soprano) and Alper Göçeri (baritone), and the conductor Paolo Villa. This work, written between 1865 and 1868 and likely inspired by the death of the composer’s mother, consists of seven movements, making it Brahms’s longest work. He himself assembled the libretto from texts derived from the German Luther Bible; thus, this Requiem is ‘sacred but non-liturgical’ as it departs from the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass. Its first performance in Bremen Cathedral was a great success, and marked a turning point in Brahms’s career. Here is the Wikipedia entry.
20.00
Tickets from Mobilet
Price: 969TL (students 669TL)
Johannes Brahms’s ‘German Requiem’
is performed at the Süreyya Opera House
on October 11
