Show: The Making of Berlin

It all began when this group of Antwerp artists met a certain Friedrich Mohr, who used to manage the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. We take a trip down memory lane with him. Spring 1945, as Soviet troops prepare to invade Berlin, already devastated by Allied bombing...

The musicians of the famous German phalanx imagined a swan song: to play The Death of Siegfried, an extract from Wagner's Twilight of the Gods, and to broadcast the concert live on the radio, performed from six different bunkers, scattered among the ruins, where the instrumentalists and the conductor had taken refuge. This technical challenge fell to Friedrich Mohr. In the twilight of his life, the old man agrees to evoke this incredible episode.

Collectif Berlin, a Belgian company renowned the world over for its shows that straddle the border between documentary and fiction, theatre and video, is breaking new ground by blurring the boundaries even further, right up to the climax. By giving him the floor, the collective gives the stage manager the opportunity to make amends for his cowardice at the time, when he, neither a Nazi nor a member of the Resistance, did not defend his Jewish musician friends who were excluded from the orchestra.

Friedrich Mohr's story is unbelievable, incredible and poignant. And it's full of twists and turns, right up to the last minute. In the end, Collectif Berlin weaves a diabolical saraband that turns our heads upside down. For, in the end, is the truth of fiction only the truth of fiction?

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