About the work
"Der Gesang des Pottwals" ("The Song of the Sperm Whale") is a musical theatre evening by Heiner Bomhard and ensemble, premiered on 31 May 2026 at the Deutsches Theater Berlin (directed by Heiner Bomhard). The piece purports to trace a lost – in fact entirely invented – opera by Giacomo Puccini: "Il canto del capodoglio" ("The Song of the Sperm Whale"). Conceived as an open-air comedy with music, the evening combines grand gesture and groan-worthy puns, playing tongue-in-cheek with the form of opera.
Plot
The starting point is the fictional search for a supposedly long-lost Puccini opera about a sperm whale. Along this trail, the evening addresses contemporary tensions – "art and capital, puns and commerce, whale rescue and election campaigning". Thematically the piece draws on Herman Melville's "Moby Dick", using that lens to question the mystery of nature and human hubris. Rather than a continuous classical operatic dramaturgy, the evening strings together comic, musical and satirical scenes.
Cultural significance
"Der Gesang des Pottwals" represents a form of music theatre that plays with the conventions of opera while ironically undercutting them: an invented Puccini opera becomes the occasion to reflect on the art world, economic exploitation and ecological questions (whale rescue). By staging the material as a light comedy with music, the Deutsches Theater combines entertainment with social satire – an example of spoken theatre's current interest in hybrid musical-performative forms.