In her works, Birke J. Bertelsmeier wants to “make her audience wonder”. She likes to create surprises, unexpected approaches and subtly built-in irritations in a highly imaginative way.
Birke J. Bertelsmeier once said that “I dream a lot musically” and tries to realise this in her scores through taking great pleasure in experimenting to come as close to the sound vision as possible.
For Bertelsmeier’s music theatre piece “Gib mir Dein” (“Give me your”), she was inspired by the 1974 film “Young Frankenstein” by Mel Brooks. Whilst Bertelmeier uses the young Frankenstein’s exclamation “It could work” as a recurring theme throughout the piece, she equally refers to the latest medical experiments in the service of eternal life by means of transplants of healthy “body spare parts” as well as Thomas Mann’s Indian legend “The Exchanged Heads” which served as a philosophical impulse for her.
In seven loosely connected scenes, the piece jumps between science and delusion, horror stories and nursery rhymes. And it returns again and again to the question: If a limp body is exchanged for another fit one, but the head remains the same: Who is then who?
Give me your
Music theatre for two singers, actors and ensemble
based on a story by Thomas Mann
Commissioned work for the 2017 Pocket Opera Festival Salzburg
Music Birke J. Bertelsmeier
Director Thierry Bruehl
Patient / Woman Michaela Mehring
Doctor/ Man Klaus Nicola Holderbaum
Patient Constanze Passin
Singer Anna Maria Hefele
