Spanish composer Germán Alonso, one of the winners of the 6th International Composition Competition “Neue Szenen”.

Spanish composer Germán Alonso (Madrid, 1984) is among the three winners of the 6th International Composition Competition Neue Szenen (New Scenes) organised by the Deutsche Oper Berlin in collaboration with the Hanns Eisler University of Music Berlin. The other two prize winners are the Lithuanian composer Juta Pranulytė and the Iranian Sina Fani Sani. To participate, according to Germán Alonso by Instagram message, “previous works of musical theatre” were requested and the composer presented his two chamber operas, The Sins of the Cities of the Plain, made with the Italian librettist Fabrizio Funari – and in which the instrumentalists of Proyecto Ocnos and Niño de Elche took part as singers -, and Marie, commissioned by the Teatro Real and premiered on 9 January at the Teatro de La Abadía, with a libretto by Lola Blasco and orchestration by Proyecto Ocnos.

The winners were chosen from among 119 projects from all over the world, submitted to the competition until 28 October. The jury was composed of the German composer Gordon Kampe and the American Robyn Schulkowsky, the Austrian writer Gerhild Steinbuch, the German playwright of the Deutsche Oper Sebastian Hanusa and the German director of the Hanns Eisler University Claus Unzen.

The award includes three grants of 8,000 euros for the winners, which will be used for the composition of a twenty to thirty-minute musical theatre piece, and three further grants of 4,000 euros for the writing of the text. The musical theatre works by the three composers will be performed in April 2023 at the Tischlerei, the second stage of the Deutsche Oper traditionally intended for experimental works. The staging and musical interpretation of the three works will be entrusted to students of the Hanns Eisler University in Berlin.

Germán Alonso graduated in composition at the Real Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid. At the same time, he studied electroacoustic composition with Alberto Bernal and continued his studies at the Strasbourg Conservatory with Mark André, as part of a master’s degree in mixed composition at the HEM in Geneva with Michael Jarrell, Luis Naon and Eric Daubresse, and at IRCAM with Mauro Lanza. He also holds a Master’s degree in Musicology from the University of Paris VIII. Since 2016 he has been a professor of orchestration at the Conservatorio Superior de Castilla-La Mancha.

© Photograph downloaded from Germán Alonso’s website.