Selam Opera!

With its pop-up opera, Selam Opera! took opera out of the house and into the city: singers and musicians of the Komische Oper Berlin performed short pop-up scenes on markets, in a boxing club, a nightclub and other everyday places. The creative team in those years: Mustafa Akça (artistic director), Anisha Bondy (creative director and stage director), Oliver Brandt, Johanna Wall, Peter Tomek and Heinz und Horst Filmproduktion.

Its best-known chapter is the Operndolmuş. In 2016 Anisha Bondy and Johanna Wall conceived this pioneering work: a minibus full of music on the historical route of the Turkish “guest worker” generation from Berlin to Istanbul. With performances and stories shared by contemporary witnesses in Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Belgrade, Sofia and Istanbul, it became an unforgettable, real journey – awarded the BKM Prize for Cultural Education in 2017.

The Operndolmuş toured several times: “Gastarbeiterroute” (2016), “In zwei Heimaten zu Hause” (At Home in Two Homelands, 2016–2019) and “Kesin Dönüş” (Final Return, 2019–2020). In 2018 it also premiered “Ben und Henry – ein Operndolmuş für Kinder”, an Operndolmuş for children, with music by Attila Kadri Şendil and libretto by Susanne Wolf.

The large-scale project Selam Opera! was launched with important sponsors under Andreas Homoki and Susanne Moser in Homoki’s last season as artistic director, 2011/12, and was developed further by Barrie Kosky, Susanne Moser and Ulrich Lenz. Since 2012 it has been run by Mustafa Akça, who in 2024 was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit for his many years of work for the city through Selam Opera!.