NO Künstler*innen – Neuköllner Oper Berlin

Anke Retzlaff

Anke Retzlaff is an actress, director, and musician. In her performances, she combines these different disciplines into a highly personal artistic signature. Her work is characterized by a high degree of interdisciplinarity and poetic expression, and it tours internationally at major music and theater festivals. In 2021, she was named “Best Emerging Artist” by Theater heute. For her role in the feature film Puppe, she was nominated for the New Faces Award as “Best Emerging Actress,” and in 2024 she received the Woody Award for the “most convincing portrayal of a fictional character” in the film DONNERSTAG.

Involved in

Birth Factory

Director, actress, and classically trained musician Anke Retzlaff – acclaimed by cinema, television, and theater alike – cuts a path through the thicket of audience voices together with her team. What is it about? The primal experience that connects us all: birth – the most intensely intimate and at the same time socially monitored moment of life. LANGUAGE German DURATION 70 […]

Premiere on 10. March 2026.
To 12. March 2026.

Nhlanhla Mahlangu

Nhlanhla Mahlangu is a singer, composer, theatre-maker, dancer, and educator. He was born in the late 1970s in the Phola Park squatter camp in apartheid-era South Africa and experienced first-hand the conflicts of the 1990s between the African National Congress, the Inkatha Freedom Party, and the so-called “Third Force.” His groundbreaking work Chant is shaped and inspired by these experiences. Through his practice, Mahlangu uncovers personal and collective histories while using art and performance as instruments of healing.

Involved in

Selemo

“The world keeps dreaming of spring.”(Tom Waits – You Can Never Hold Back Spring) Back into the light, into beauty, and into life! Spring represents the power of transformation, rebirth, and an ancient promise of prosperity. What can this fantasy of abundance mean for us – culturally, spiritually, and sonically – across geographical boundaries? LANGUAGES […]

Premiere on 12. February 2026.
To 01. March 2026.

S’busiso Shozi

S’busiso Shozi is a Durban-born composer, theatre maker, vocal coach and performer. As a creative, Shozi is primarily interested in exploring sounds, text and the body in motion, embracing collaborations as means of developing sets of ideas. Through his practice, he explores the origins and intersections of African sounds, language and culture across the continent. In 2024, Shozi further explored and presented his methodologies in a residency that was held by the Cartier Foundation in Paris.

Shozi has written, composed, musically directed and produced for Theatre works such as African Exodus which was recently staged at Perelman Performing Arts Centre NYC. Shozi has also composed the music to Shaka iLembe Season 2 and Queendom Season 1 (BET Telenovela). He is currently commissioned by Neuköllner Oper and Komische Oper Berlin as a composer and musical director for the new chamber opera called SELEMO.

Involved in

Selemo

Premiere on 12. February 2026.
To 01. March 2026.

Anthony Hüseyin

Anthony Hüseyin is a non-binary musician and performer of Kurdish-Turkish and Arab heritage. Born in Urfa and raised in Istanbul, Anthony studied classical voice and jazz vocals, completing a Master’s degree in Jazz Vocals in the Netherlands. Anthony currently lives in Berlin, creating art that brings together music, performance, and activism.

Involved in

CRIME OF PASSION

CRIME OF PASSION is the new work by non-binary Berlin based artist and musician Anthony Hüseyin. It examines femicide in opera, its historical roots, and its presence in our daily lives. Carmen, Salome and Violetta refuse to die again and again on stage. Instead, they reclaim their narratives, offering an ancestral, musical, and spiritual resistance. […]

Premiere on 03. October 2025.
To 07. December 2025.

Martin G. Berger

Martin G. Berger was born in Berlin in 1987 and grew up in Berlin, Istanbul and Munich.His work as a director, author and translator has taken him throughout the German-speaking world, including. to the Theater Basel, the Staatsoper Hannover, the Luzerner Theater, the Deutsche Oper Berlin (Tischlerei), the Theater Bremen, the Theater Trier, the Deutsche Nationaltheater Weimar, the Staatstheater Augsburg, the Theater Heidelberg, the Staatstheater Darmstadt, the Oper Dortmund, the Volksoper Wien (Kasino am Schwarzenbergplatz), the Staatsoperette Dresden, the Theater Oberhausen and the Neuköllner Oper. Martin G. Berger has received awards and nominations for his productions; he was nominated for the German theater prize FAUST in the category “Best Direction Musical Theater” in 2018 and 2020 and for the Götz Friedrich Prize in 2015. He won the Karan Armstrong Prize of the Götz Friedrich Foundation, the German Musical Theater Prize 2016″ for “Best Direction”, the “Trier Musical Award 2016” and the “Orpheus for Special Services to Operetta” 2018. His production “The Barber of Seville” was named “Best Production” in the NRW Critics’ Survey in 2019.Martin G. Berger is distinguished by his wide range. He works in opera, operetta, musical, but also in drama, in performance collectives and with puppeteers. He often adapts works in his own spirit and brings together performers from different genres for his productions.Berger also appears as an author and translator. His chamber opera “ELFIE” (music: Wolfgang Böhmer) premiered at the Neuköllner Oper in 2019, his musical “Aus Tradition anders” (with Jasper Sonne) at the Staatstheater Darmstadt in spring 2018. His translations of “Candide”, “Follies” and “Anyone Can Whistle” are published by “Musik und Bühne”.Martin G. Berger’s path into directing led him over several years as a permanent assistant at the Dortmund Opera and the Hanover State Opera. He assisted renowned directors such as Christine Mielitz, Sebastian Baumgarten and Benedikt von Peter.

Website

Involved in

Der zweite Kirschgarten

The cherry orchard is for sale! So, the second cherry orchard – here and now in Germany, 2025. This seems to be a good time for the whole family to come together once more, as so many memories are tied to it. But also to the first orchard, which stood in Namibia. It was planted […]

Premiere on 18. December 2025.
To 16. January 2026.