Carmina Burana

#multidisciplinary #monumental

Following its huge success in 2025, the production is returning to Bonn for a second year running! Who doesn’t know Carmina Burana by Carl Orff? In this multidisciplinary production from Ukraine, all the arts are combined: a large orchestra plays for the dancers and the mixed adult and children’s choirs, while video installations are projected in the background. Over 135 people are involved in the performance.

The production, choreography and stage design are by Gerard Mosterd, who works as a choreographer, dancer and producer in the Netherlands and worldwide.

The scenic cantata Carmina Burana comprises 24 poems from the medieval collection of the same name. The texts were authored by poets and wandering monks, scholars and students who travelled the world and wrote down their thoughts in Latin, medieval German and Old French.

The contrasting vocal and orchestral numbers paint different pictures of the world: some celebrate the pleasures of life, happiness, unbridled gaiety, the beauty of nature in springtime, and passionate love, while others depict the hardships of the monks and itinerant students, looking with irony at their own lives and hoping that destiny will smile on them. The philosophical essence of the cantata is the idea that people, with all their little joys and worries, are merely a plaything of capricious fate, symbolised by the ever-turning wheel of fortune.

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