The foreign, the home so close

If the director Nicola Hümpel had chosen the discipline of art rock at the Bauhaus Dessau almost 20 years ago - the project would very likely also have been a success, given the stylistic confidence and admirable consistency inherent in this woman. But Nico, as she unceremoniously calls herself, together with her congenial partner Oliver Proske and a handful of other enthusiasts, decided at that time on an unheard-of, creative musical theater. "Nico and the Navigators" have long been international stars Nico and the Navigators have long since become international stars and are at home on the world's great stages. Whoever in Dessau, when the playfulness of the troupe outweighed the musicality, but the urge towards composition and wholeness was already clearly recognizable, should have smiled benevolently mildly - now he will simply be overwhelmed. On Monday evening, Nico and comrades presented their latest production in Berlin's Konzerthaus am Gendarmenmarkt, at the finest address in the capital: "Silent Songs into the wild": a "staged concert" with music by Franz Schubert. On the day after the sobering election, what commentary on the insecure image that Germany is currently presenting of itself could have been more fitting than this one! Singers, dancers and six musicians - all of exquisite quality and coming from different countries - perform a total work of art dedicated to the great Schubert and the question: Who is this I, where does it have its home? "Nico and the Navigators": This is what freedom feels like To be a stranger and to arrive, to be desperate and to be safe - this is what this finely choreographed evening in the stately Konzerthaus, staged to the point by Nico and brilliantly set up in terms of stage and video by Oliver Proske, is about. The place is forgotten, no politician's name haunts one's mind. One is only eye and ear and in the heart one with the actors. During the song of the linden tree, for example, accompanied by Tobias Weber with the touch of a blues guitar, home is freed of all the ballast that might have weighed you down. This is what freedom feels like.

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