Petrit Halilaj: Syrigana

The piece premiered in June 2025 as an open-air performance in the Kosovo countryside and will now take place at the museum as a performative concert featuring eleven musicians, two sopranos, and the wedding band Don’t Listen to Your Neighbors, conducted by Marco Crispo, amidst the exhibition.

The mythical site of Syrigana, a village over 3,000 years old near Halilaj’s hometown of Runik, forms the conceptual starting point of the opera.

The archaeological site and setting of local myths becomes the stage for an epic, queer love story: in five acts, the opera recounts the arrival of Fox and Rooster, who were cast out of paradise and reach the site by helicopter from the NATO peacekeeping mission KFOR.

The installation-based version of the opera, on view since September 2025 in Halilaj’s solo exhibition at the Hamburger Bahnhof, is now being activated in a new, dreamlike form as the exhibition draws to a close.

While the original opera was realized as a stage production, here it unfolds as an interplay of various elements: The Kosovo Philharmonic performs the score, sopranos Nina Guo and Urta Haziraj lend their voices to the narrative, and marionettes bring the plot to life in miniature format, played by Keumbyul Lim, Hanik Soleimani, and Carlo Silvester Duer.

Duration: approximately one hour

The exhibition “Petrit Halilaj. An Opera Out of Time”

The museum version of his first opera, “Syrigana,” is the central focus of the solo exhibition “Petrit Halilaj. An Opera Out of Time” (through Sunday, May 31, 2026). In addition to the site-specific work, the presentation in the spacious Rieckhallen features sculptures and installations from various creative phases that explore the lived experience of war, flight, and exile, as well as queerness and cultural oppression. The exhibition is open until 6 p.m. on performance days.

The event is part of the 30th-anniversary program of the Hamburger Bahnhof. In 2026, the Hamburger Bahnhof will celebrate its 30th anniversary with a program spanning from the history of the venue to the future: eight special exhibitions, a new presentation of the collection, as well as performances and concerts will extend the museum’s reach far into the urban space.

The highlight will be the anniversary weekend from November 13 to 15, 2026, during which an international conference on the future of contemporary collection museums will take place and the museum will be open continuously for 30 hours.

The event is curated by Catherine Nichols, curator at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart.

The event is supported by the Ministry of Culture, Youth, and Sport of the Republic of Kosovo, Hamburger Bahnhof International Companions e. V., the Italian Embassy in Berlin, and the Embassy of the Republic of Kosovo in Berlin.