With the founding of the Metropolis Orchester Berlin in 2017, a professional cinema orchestra returned to the Berlin music and film scene for the first time since the silent era. Established by conductor Burkhard Götze and a group of Berlin-based musicians passionate about silent film, the ensemble has become a leader in the vibrant preservation of silent cinema and is helping to revive the long-forgotten genre of film music. New compositions are regularly created specifically for the orchestra.
After a regular silent film series was established at Berlin’s Babylon cinema, the Metropolis Orchester Berlin now also performs at prominent cultural venues including the Theater im Delphi, the Zeughauskino, and Heimathafen Neukölln. The orchestra is also a regular guest at major film festivals across Germany and beyond. In 2022, the Metropolis Orchester Berlin opened the UFA Film Nights with its performance of the score for MOUNTAIN OF DESTINY. In 2023, the orchestra accompanied WHERE IS COLETTI? with a new composition by Richard Siedhoff. Last year, it performed live for a double feature of two early Ernst Lubitsch comedies— KOHLHIESEL’S DAUGHTERS and I DON’T WANT TO BE A MAN.
In 2025, the orchestra will return to the UFA Film Nights to perform Richard Strauss’s music for KNIGHT OF THE ROSE, for which Strauss created an entirely instrumental adaptation of his opera score and composed several new passages specifically for the film.
