Berliner Philharmonie tickets 15 September 2026 - Berlin Music Festival: Chineke! Orchestra / Cape Town Opera | GoComGo.com

Berlin Music Festival: Chineke! Orchestra / Cape Town Opera

Berliner Philharmonie, Main Auditorium, Berlin, Germany
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8 PM
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US$ 124

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.

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).

Important Info
Type: Classical Concert
City: Berlin, Germany
Starts at: 20:00

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.

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).

Programme
George Gershwin: Porgy and Bess® (1935) opera in three acts by George Gershwin, Erwin DuBose Heyward, Dorothy Heyward and Ira Gershwin semi-staged performance
Overview

More diversity in classical music! This is the objective which prompted the Chineke! Orchestra, founded 2015 in London, as a catalysator for change in order to achieve current diversity targets within the classical music world. As part of their joint European tour with the Cape Town Opera from South Africa, they will present George Gershwin’s masterpiece Porgy and Bess in a new semi-staged production at the Musikfest Berlin. Enrique Mazzola will conduct.

When George Gershwin was working on Porgy and Bess, race discrimination was still very much prevalent in public life across large parts of the USA. The quasi-verismo opera is today one of the most frequently performed stage works of the 20th century. As early as 1952, Porgy and Bess was included on the Berliner Festwochen programme at the Titania-Palast in what was then West Berlin, followed by further performances in 1976 and 2012. The opera is focused on the fate of socially deprived Afro-Americans in the southern USA and is set in Cattfish Row, a sleazy alley close to Charleston harbour in South Carolina. Gershwin was at this time one of the most successful Broadway composers. He oriented himself in Porgy and Bess to a wide diversity of musical styles (including influences of jazz and spirituals which are frequently embedded in highly complex musical structures) and ensured that the work was not only performed to elite opera audiences. What is more, he wished Porgy and Bess to be exclusively sung by Black singers: an ideal project for the top-class Cape Town Opera Vocal Ensemble from South Africa and the Chineke! Orchestra which has now become an integral part of British musical life since its highly acclaimed debut at the prestigious BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall in 2017. The performance will be conducted by Enrique Mazzola, currently music director at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Venue Info

Berliner Philharmonie - Berlin
Location   Herbert-von-Karajan-Str. 1

The Berliner Philharmonie is a concert hall in Berlin, Germany and home to the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. The Philharmonie lies on the south edge of the city's Tiergarten and just west of the former Berlin Wall. The Philharmonie is on Herbert-von-Karajan-Straße, named for the orchestra's longest-serving principal conductor. The building forms part of the Kulturforum complex of cultural institutions close to Potsdamer Platz.

The Philharmonie consists of two venues, the Grand Hall (Großer Saal) with 2,440 seats and the Chamber Music Hall (Kammermusiksaal) with 1,180 seats. Though conceived together, the smaller hall was opened in the 1980s, some twenty years after the main building.

Hans Scharoun designed the building, which was constructed over the years 1960–1963. It opened on 15 October 1963 with Herbert von Karajan conducting Beethoven's 9th Symphony. It was built to replace the old Philharmonie, destroyed by British bombers on 30 January 1944, the eleventh anniversary of Hitler becoming Chancellor. The hall is a singular building, asymmetrical and tentlike, with the main concert hall in the shape of a pentagon. The height of the rows of seats increases irregularly with distance from the stage. The stage is at the centre of the hall, surrounded by seating on all sides. The so-called vineyard-style seating arrangement (with terraces rising around a central orchestral platform) was pioneered by this building, and became a model for other concert halls, including the Sydney Opera House (1973), Denver's Boettcher Concert Hall (1978), the Gewandhaus in Leipzig (1981), Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles (2003), and the Philharmonie de Paris (2014).

Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck and his quartet recorded three live performances at the hall; Dave Brubeck in Berlin (1964), Live at the Berlin Philharmonie (1970), and We're All Together Again for the First Time (1973). Miles Davis's 1969 live performance at the hall has also been released on DVD.

On 20 May 2008 a fire broke out at the hall. A quarter of the roof suffered considerable damage as firefighters cut openings to reach the flames beneath the roof. The hall interior sustained water damage but was otherwise "generally unharmed". Firefighters limited damage using foam. The cause of the fire was attributed to welding work, and no serious damage was caused either to the structure or interior of the building. Performances resumed, as scheduled, on 1 June 2008 with a concert by the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra.

The main organ was built by Karl Schuke, Berlin, in 1965, and renovated in 1992, 2012 and 2016. It has four manuals and 91 stops. The pipes of the choir organs and the Tuba 16' and Tuba 8' stops are not assigned to any group and can be played from all four manuals and the pedals.

Important Info
Type: Classical Concert
City: Berlin, Germany
Starts at: 20:00
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