Die Zauberflöte

»Die Zauberflöte« restages Mozart's opera for the Berlin Opera Academy Festival as »A Nursing/Retirement Home in the 1950s«: media scenography built entirely from AI-generated visuals turns the Alte Münze stage into a portal to a bygone era — a set that feels both familiar and foreign, like a memory rekindled on stage.

The look was grown from scratch with Overlapping, the Berlin studio behind it: Simone and the scenographer built the latter's AI workstation together, and Simone introduced him to Automatic1111 and Deforum. From there the scenographer created every image and video himself, feeding his own drawings, sketches and renders in as templates so each surreal backdrop stayed rooted in the original design.

On stage nights, Simone worked as video operator, switching scenes live and layering effects in sync with the singers as they moved through rooms that exist nowhere but on screen — nothing real, everything fiction, exactly where the production wanted to sit.

Musical direction: Carlos Spierer.