Labor 2025/26

The «Labor» series provides space for experimental music theater, encouraging exploration, improvisation, and taking risks. For the season opening, composer and director Simon Steen-Andersen takes his music theater piece «Wie du warst! Wie du bist!» deep into the basement and into the intertwined stories of the Zurich Opera House and its younger counterpart, the Bernhard Theater. The piece «Sillons de Mémoires», a music theater performance by Zurich composer Katharina Rosenberger and electro-composer Dzovinar Mikirditsian, explores the themes of memory and recollection. Together with the Geneva percussion collective Eklekto, they blend music theater, radio art, and concert. The cryptic, philosophical texts of music theorist Andreas Werckmeister and compositions by Schütz to Charles Ives serve as the starting point for the music theater creation «Werckmeister Harmonien», by Swiss theater artist Thom Luz, which will close the season at a new location in Zurich-Oerlikon, the «Oper im Quartier».