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Tempelhof airport in Berlin closed nearly 16 years ago, but one of its hangars will become the venue for the Komische Oper’s staging of Hans Werner Henze’s “The Raft of the Medusa.”

The director Tobias Kratzer, speaking into a microphone, stopped a group of extras and chorus members during a rehearsal of Hans Werner Henze’s “The Raft of the Medusa,” which will open the Komische Oper’s season on Saturday.

“We need to encourage new small businesses to set up shop downtown and make it easier, not harder, to stay in business,” spokesperson Jillian Henze said by email.

“Downtown generates half of the city’s tax revenues, and the ability to fund services across the board will only be more challenging in the absence of a robust downtown, which is why we need to take these actions,” Jillian Henze, the group’s director of communications, wrote in an email in March.

Ambitious attempts in mid-1950s London — notably “Prince of the Pagodas” and “Undine,” with exceptional scores by Benjamin Britten and Hans Werner Henze, respectively — “didn’t,” as the British press sniffed, “quite come off.”