Opera weekend for young opera friends - February 17th to March 1st 2009

At the end of February 2009 the Apollos – the young friends of the Staatsoper – once more invited other opera interested people to the meanwhile 6th international opera weekend in Berlin. Ten young ladies and gentlemen from Germany, Belgium, France and Switzerland followed this invitation. Highlight of the weekend was the »Faust« workshop, run by theatre pedagogue Rainer O. Brinkmann, that prepared the participants at best for the following attendance of the »Faust« new production in the Staatsoper by re-enacting the essential scenes of the famous opera of Charles Gounod. After a shared dinner in the theatre canteen the attendees could amongst others admire opera stars Marina Poplavskaya as Marguerite and René Pape as Mephistopheles on the Staatsoper stage. At Sunday noontime the group had the opportunity to interview the young tenor Patrick Vogel and thus learn about the backgrounds of a subsistence as a singer at first hand. In the evening, the attendance of the »Rosenkavalier« performance was on the agenda which provided a re-union with Patrick Vogel who sang the part of the chamberlain. Between the individual items of the agenda there was enough time left for the international guests to explore Berlin. On Monday morning the opera weekend concluded with a cosy breakfast and the mutual promise to keep in touch.