Festival · 2025 · The breakthrough year

Münstermann Festival

Festival 2025

Dafne · Heinrich Schütz

In 1627 Heinrich Schütz set Martin Opitz’s “Dafne” for a princely wedding at Torgau — as far as anyone knows, the first opera in the German language. The music is lost.

The festival imagines that work sounding in Oldenburg instead: a comparable wedding was celebrated here in 1635, and in those same years the sculptor Ludwig Münstermann was making his altars and pulpits in the churches of the region. The two belong together — one transregionally networked Protestant artistic landscape of northern Europe.

For Forum Neue Kunst this was the breakthrough: the first fully professional opera production at Schloss Oldenburg, and the starting shot for a concert series in the Münstermann churches.

Dates

5 October 2025

"Kröger" Organ & "Münstermann" Altar St. Aegidius, Berne
Seventeenth-century organ music · Reading and commentary
11–12 October 2025 · 17:30

Dafne Schloss Oldenburg — Schlosssaal, Landesmuseum, Oldenburg
Heinrich Schütz — Dafne (1627)

Staged production with Ensemble UrgentMusic
8 November 2025

musica est divinum donum St. Laurentius, Langwarden
23 November 2025

Annunciation · Communion · Crucifixion Schlosskirche, Varel
29 November 2025

For God so loved the world St. Matthäus-Kirche, Rodenkirchen

Cast: Dafne — Dorota Szczepańska; Apollo — Maximilian Vogler; Venus — Elena Harsányi; Cupido — Nicholas Tamagna; Michel Gattwinkel · Shepherd Chorus; Stina Raupers · Shepherd Chorus; Miguel Callejas · Shepherd Chorus

Creative team: Nicholas Tamagna · Director; Veronika Skuplik · Music Director; Olaf Kreitsmann · Production; Brianna Meese · Assistant Director & Administration; Kerstin Druivenga-Kreitsmann · Costumes; Katrin Schöß · Set Design; Izabela Mittwollen · Photography; Daniela Ella Hermann · Props; Nils Dieckmann · Lighting; Roland Wilson · Music Reconstruction

Supported by

NDR Kultur — NDR Musikförderung
Kulturstiftung der Öffentlichen Versicherungen Oldenburg
LzO-Stiftung — Landessparkasse zu Oldenburg
Stadt Oldenburg
Oldenburgische Landschaft

Partners

Ludwig-Münstermann-Gesellschaft e.V.
Landesmuseum Kunst & Kultur Oldenburg

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