About the work
“Sunville” is an Afrofuturist music-theatre work developed jointly by the Swedish composer and singer Sofia Jernberg, the Congolese writer Fiston Mwanza Mujila and the choreographer and director Stephanie Thiersch: Jernberg wrote the music, Mujila the libretto, and Thiersch is responsible for direction and choreography. It is Jernberg’s first work for music theatre. The world premiere is scheduled for 25 September 2026 at the Tischlerei of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, as a co-production with the Wiener Festwochen; Jernberg sings herself and Mujila appears as narrator. An excerpt had already been performed for the first time by Klangforum Wien on 14 June 2026 at the Wiener Festwochen in the ORF RadioKulturhaus.
Plot
People who have survived the sea, refugees and exiles gather on an island. They try to found a society from scratch in which origin and power no longer create a hierarchy. The piece asks whether a community founded on love is possible, and thus, quite fundamentally, how we want to live. It is sung and spoken in German, English, French and Swahili.
Cultural significance
The work draws on the Afrofuturism of the jazz musician Sun Ra and on Karlheinz Stockhausen’s cosmic ideas of music; alongside the voices, double bass, saxophone, piano and string quartet are heard. The libretto was written as part of Mujila’s residency as Poet in Residence at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in the 2026/27 season.