Written on Skin Tickets

Deutsche Oper Berlin, Berlin, Germany

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Available Dates: 4 - 20 May, 2025 (3 events)

Important Info

Type: Opera

City: Berlin, Germany

Duration: 1h 30min

Acts: 3

Sung in: English

Titles in: German,English

Ticket delivery: E-Tickets

E-tickets: Print at home or at the box office of the event if so specified. You will find more information in your booking confirmation email.

Can I choose my seats?

You can only select the category, and not the exact seats.
If you order 2 or 3 tickets: your seats will be next to each other.
If you order 4 or more tickets: your seats will be next to each other, or, if this is not possible, we will provide a combination of groups of seats (at least in pairs, for example 2+2 or 2+3).

Cast

Performers

Choose the date to see the peformers

Creators

Composer: George Benjamin

Director: Katie Mitchell

Librettist: Martin Crimp

Overview

Katie Mitchell’s visually powerful and psychologically accurate production has toured widely on the international circuit and now comes to Berlin.

About the work
Three angels look back to a period in the past when books were precious artefacts with texts written on skin. One of the angels acts out the role of an olden-day illustrator who has been commissioned by the rich and powerful Protector to create a beautifully illuminated manuscript setting out the Protector’s biography. In his patron’s home the angel encounters Agnès, the Protector’s younger wife, who is still a virgin on account of her husband’s self-imposed abstinence. Despite this, he is jealous and keeps a close eye on her – to no avail, because Agnès begins an affair with the angel in his incarnation as an artist. The Protector learns of their relationship and kills the illustrator. Then he serves his unwitting wife the heart of her lover as part of a meal.

For the composer of WRITTEN ON SKIN, George Benjamin, English author Martin Crimp adapted one of the best-known stories from the France of the High Middle Ages. “Le cœur mangé”, the tale of a woman eating the heart of her lover, can be traced to a 12-century Occitan text reputedly written by a troubadour named Guillem de Cabestanh, although some sources suggest he came to the same gruesome end. Crimp’s text charting the gory ménage à trois is also a rumination on the power of art. Agnès is in awe of the illustrator’s talent for chronicling real events by means of images and even creating entire worlds from scratch. Yet it is the pictures, coupled with a declaration of love to Agnès in text form, that alert the Protector to his affair with his wife.

About the production
The world premiere of WRITTEN ON SKIN took place at the 2012 Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and was rapturously received. The work is a rare example of perfect text-composition symbiosis. A gripping story and precise, poetic language go hand-in-hand with an acutely theatrical score which, albeit thoroughly contemporary, also has the kind of full-bodied tonality that can rivet a broad range of audiences.

History

Premiere of this production: 07 July 2012, Aix-en-Provence Festival

Written on Skin is an opera by the British composer George Benjamin, with a libretto written by Martin Crimp. The libretto by Martin Crimp, who also wrote the libretto for Benjamin's first opera Into The Little Hill, is based on legend of the troubadour Guillaume de Cabestanh; the story is also repeated in The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio. The action takes place in 13th-century Provence.

Synopsis

Part I

Scene 1: Chorus of Angels.
The chorus takes us back to 800 years ago, when books were "written on skin," and introduces the protagonists: the Protector (a wealthy landowner) "addicted to purity and violence" and Agnès, his wife, his "property." One of the angels transforms into the Boy, a manuscript illuminator.

Scene 2: The Protector, Agnès and the Boy
The Protector asks the Boy to create a book celebrating his life, showing his enemies in Hell and his family in Paradise. The Boy shows the Protector a sample of his work. Agnès distrusts the Boy and is skeptical of the creation of images picturing their lives, but her objections are overruled by the Protector.

Scene 3: Chorus of Angels
The Angels recall the brutality of the biblical story of Creation and its hostility toward women.

Scene 4: Agnès and the Boy
Unknown to her husband, Agnès visits the Boy's workshop to see how a book is made. When the Boy shows a picture of Eve, Agnès laughs and challenges him to make an image of a real woman, one that he could want sexually.

Scene 5: The Protector, John, and Marie
With the approach of winter, the Protector ruminates on Agnès's changed demeanor. She hardly talks or eats, turns her back on him, and pretends to sleep at night. Marie and John (Agnès's sister and brother-in-law) arrive for a visit. Marie is skeptical of the idea of writing a book and questions why the Boy is treated like a member of the family. This arouses the Protector's anger: he defends the Boy and his book, and threatens to forbid Marie and John from entering his property.

Scene 6: Agnès and the Boy
That night, the Boy visits Agnès in her room alone and shows a picture of the kind she wished for. At first not recognizing it, she gradually realizes the painted image, of a woman on a bed, is of her. They look at the picture together and Agnès offers herself to the Boy.

Part II

Scene 7: The Protector's bad dream
The Protector dreams that his people are rebelling against the book, and that there are rumors of a secret page where Agnès is shown gripping the Boy in bed.

Scene 8: The Protector and Agnès
The Protect wakes up from the dream and reaches for Agnès, who is standing by the window watching the Protector's men burn villages. She asks her husband to touch and kiss her but he is disgusted by her request and says that it results from her childishness. Angered at being called a child, Agnès challenges her husband to go to the Boy and "ask him what I am."

Scene 9: The Protector and the Boy
In the woods, the Protector confronts the Boy and asks who he is sleeping with and whether it's Agnès. Wanting to protect Agnès, the Boy lies and says he is sleeping with Marie. Satisfied, the Protector returns to the house and tells Agnès that the Boy is sleeping with "that whore your sister."

Scene 10: Agnès and the Boy
Believing the Protector's story, Agnès accuses the Boy of betraying her, but the Boy explains he lied to protect her. Agnès says he was only protecting himself. She tells the Boy that if he really loved her, he would tell the truth and punish the Protector for treating Agnès like a child. She demands that the Boy create an image that will destroy the husband's smugness.

Part III

Scene 11: The Protector, Agnès and the Boy
The Boy shows the Protector and Agnès some pages from the manuscript, including images of atrocities. The Protector asks to see images of Paradise, but the Boy responds that these images are Paradise and questions whether the Protector sees his own family and property in them. Agnès then asks to be shown the images of Hell. The Boy presents her with a page of writing, frustrating Agnès because, as a woman, she has never been taught how to read. The Boy leaves, leaving the Protector and Agnès with this "secret page."

Scene 12: The Protector and Agnès
The Protector reads the "secret page." The Boy has written a detailed description of his relationship with Agnès. This makes the Protector furious, but satisfies Agnès because it shows the Boy did exactly what she wanted. Ignoring her husband's anger, she asks him to show her the word for love.

Scene 13: Chorus of Angels and the Protector
The Angels describe the cruelty of a God who creates man with conflicting desires, making him "ashamed to be human." The Protector goes into the woods and murders the Boy.

Scene 14: The Protector and Agnès
The Protector attempts to reassert control over Agnès. Sitting at a long table, she is forced to eat a meal to prove her obedience. The Protector repeatedly asks her how the food tastes and is infuriated by her response that it tastes good. He then reveals that she has eaten the Boy's heart. Agnès proclaims that no act of violence will remove the taste of the Boy's heart from her mouth.

Scene 15: The Boy/Angel 1
The Boy reappears as the Angel and shows one more picture: Agnès, suspended in midair. The Protector had rushed at her with the intent of killing her, but before he could, she took her own life by jumping from the balcony. Three angels painted in the margin turn to the audience.

Venue Info

Deutsche Oper Berlin - Berlin
Bismarckstraße 35

The Deutsche Oper Berlin is an opera company located in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin, Germany. The resident building is the country's second-largest opera house and also home to the Berlin State Ballet. Since 2004 the Deutsche Oper Berlin, like the Staatsoper Unter den Linden (Berlin State Opera), the Komische Oper Berlin, the Berlin State Ballet, and the Bühnenservice Berlin (Stage and Costume Design), has been a member of the Berlin Opera Foundation.

The company's history goes back to the Deutsches Opernhaus built by the then independent city of Charlottenburg—the "richest town of Prussia"—according to plans designed by Heinrich Seeling from 1911. It opened on November 7, 1912 with a performance of Beethoven's Fidelio, conducted by Ignatz Waghalter. In 1925, after the incorporation of Charlottenburg by the 1920 Greater Berlin Act, the name of the resident building was changed to Städtische Oper (Municipal Opera).

With the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, the opera was under control of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Minister Joseph Goebbels had the name changed back to Deutsches Opernhaus, competing with the Berlin State Opera in Mitte controlled by his rival, the Prussian minister-president Hermann Göring. In 1935, the building was remodeled by Paul Baumgarten and the seating reduced from 2300 to 2098. Carl Ebert, the pre-World War II general manager, chose to emigrate from Germany rather than endorse the Nazi view of music, and went on to co-found the Glyndebourne opera festival in England. He was replaced by Max von Schillings, who acceded to enact works of "unalloyed German character". Several artists, like the conductor Fritz Stiedry and the singer Alexander Kipnis, followed Ebert into emigration. The opera house was destroyed by a RAF air raid on 23 November 1943. Performances continued at the Admiralspalast in Mitte until 1945. Ebert returned as general manager after the war.

After the war, in what was now West Berlin, the company, again called Städtische Oper, used the nearby Theater des Westens; its opening production was Fidelio, on 4 September 1945. Its home was finally rebuilt in 1961 but to a much-changed, sober design by Fritz Bornemann. The opening production of the newly named Deutsche Oper, on 24 September, was Mozart's Don Giovanni.

Past Generalmusikdirektoren (GMD, general music directors) have included Bruno Walter, Kurt Adler, Ferenc Fricsay, Lorin Maazel, Gerd Albrecht, Jesús López-Cobos, and Christian Thielemann. In October 2005, the Italian conductor Renato Palumbo was appointed GMD as of the 2006/2007 season. In October 2007, the Deutsche Oper announced the appointment of Donald Runnicles as their next Generalmusikdirektor, effective August 2009, for an initial contract of five years. Simultaneously, Palumbo and the Deutsche Oper mutually agreed to terminate his contract, effective November 2007.

On the evening of 2 June 1967, Benno Ohnesorg, a student taking part in the German student movement, was shot in the streets around the opera house. He had been protesting against the visit to Germany by the Shah of Iran, who was attending a performance of Mozart's The Magic Flute.

In 1986 the American Berlin Opera Foundation was founded.

In April 2001, the Italian conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli died at the podium while conducting Verdi's Aida, at age 54.

In September 2006, the Deutsche Oper's Intendantin (general manager) Kirsten Harms drew criticism after she cancelled the production of Mozart's opera Idomeneo by Hans Neuenfels, because of fears that a scene in it featuring the severed heads of Jesus, Buddha and Muhammad would offend Muslims, and that the opera house's security might come under threat if violent protests took place. Critics of the decision include German Ministers and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The reaction from Muslims has been mixed — the leader of Germany's Islamic Council welcomed the decision, whilst a leader of Germany's Turkish community, criticising the decision, said:

This is about art, not about politics ... We should not make art dependent on religion — then we are back in the Middle Ages.

At the end of October 2006, the opera house announced that performances of Mozart's opera Idomeneo would then proceed. Kirsten Harms, after announcing in 2009 that she would not renew her contract beyond 2011, was bid farewell in July of that year.