I was sixteen. I had an old iPod—one of those early models with the tiny screen and the spinning wheel inside it, and carefully selected playlists. One of them was called *Jesus Christ Superstar*
After school, I’d meet my friends—same time, same place. We’d go to the park, skating on cracked concrete, talking about everything and nothing, laughing until it got dark. Then, sometimes, we’d go to concerts, standing in the front rows like we were invincible. And in the background of all that noise and movement, I heard it:
Hosanna Hey Sanna Sanna Sanna Ho…
It wasn’t loud. Just faint, like something coming through the static of an old radio. I’d go to bed with that sound still lingering, and when I woke up the next day for school, it was still there. Somewhere close to my ears, somewhere behind everything.
Time passed. Friends moved to different cities. The skate park got quieter, then louder again—but with other kids, ones we didn’t know. I stopped skating. I stopped using that iPod. But even years later, once in a while, I’d hear it again:
Hosanna Hey Sanna…
A few days ago, my sister told me that *Superstar* was coming to Komische Oper Berlin. The moment she said it, something lit up in my head, like a forgotten streetlamp turning on after years of blackout. The music was there again, clear and insistent.
Hosanna Hey Sanna Sanna Sanna Ho...
And I went.
And it was beautiful.
Not just technically—though it was that, too. The staging, the voices, the lights—it was all perfect in the way only something made with complete belief can be.
The first chord struck.
The performance was so precise, so full of breath… Perfectly staged. Fiercely sung. Quietly unforgettable.
And suddenly I was sixteen again, but also here, now in Berlin. It wasn’t just theater. It was time travel — quiet, invisible, exact. And it made it present again.
The music ended, but something kept playing — somewhere just behind my thoughts.
Hosanna Hey Sanna Sanna Sanna Ho…
Photos by Jan Windszus
