Christoph Marthaler

For 35 years, through musicality and subtle humor, director Christoph Marthaler has been liberating theater from the weight of classic plays, acting conventions, and time constraints. Now, the Swiss director, who resides in Hamburg, returns to the Summer Festival for the fourth time to stage one last grand gala before the upcoming renovation of the Kampnagel Halls (and the transition to something new). A relic of a show from an era when glamorous public celebrations were staged with great fanfare and watched or attended by millions, Marthaler brings together a European ensemble and the Symphoniker Hamburg, led by its principal conductor Sylvain Cambreling, on the grand Kampnagel stage. Drawing on memories of gigantic sets, ballets, international star guests, showers of gold, wind machines, and elegantly graying hosts with sly humor, Marthaler creates a celebration of the form itself: at the center is the essence of the gala in every conceivable sound, shape, and color. Does the gala offer solace in the difficult hours of change, farewell, and new beginnings? Perhaps, for it is not the gala that passes, but always, again and again, the individual human being. What prospects!