A group of people meet, a pair of lovers are mocked and aggressive masculinity triumphs over supposed weakness and sentimentality. The war is sung about, enthusiasm spreads. An old story is recited: the Christian crusader Tancredi meets his lover Clorinda on the battlefield, but she belongs to the enemy Muslim camp. He does not recognize her and kills her in a duel. Dying, she asks to be baptized, only then does he realize who he has killed with his own hands. Two angels take over the direction, turn Clorinda into a martyr and effectively elevate her to the rank of a third angel. When everyone has left the stage, Arianna finds herself alone on a desert island. Her lover Teseo has sailed away without her on divine instructions and simply left her behind. She lives through all the stages of hope and despair, grief and anger and concludes with the realization that this is what happens when you believe too much and love too much. She is somewhat rudely torn from her grief by three stagehands who mock her and her tragedy and give free rein to their playfulness. A couple appear and communicate through letters: the relationship between the poet Paul Celan and his wife Gisèle is heavily burdened by his traumas. The experience of the Holocaust, the loss of his parents and the barely concealed anti-Semitism even after the Second World War have taken their toll on Paul psychologically. Gisèle finds no way to help him and reproaches herself for it. When he attacks her with a knife in a rage, the couple painfully realize that living together is no longer possible. A group of people find themselves in a lament over the unattainability of their loved one and describe the agony of unrequited love.

Under the title GLAUBE, LIEBE - HOFFNUNG?, the opera school explores conflicts that can arise between lovers, especially when strong religious feelings work against love. We live in a century in which wars are omnipresent, for a wide variety of motivations - but also because of religious differences. Religious radicalism (like any form of extremism) has never been part of the solution, but always part of the problem. It is therefore all the more astonishing that in supposedly enlightened, secular societies, wars of opinion are suddenly being waged again, that freedoms that have long been taken for granted are once again being called into question and that people are being discriminated against because of their faith. It shows us that faith at all times and even today can be a similarly powerful driving force as love. And that it can incite people to similarly irrational, destructive actions. We find these events in music (theater) pieces that are 400 years old as well as in the latest works - that alone proves the timelessness of this problem. The stage uses elementary means to create signs from light and haze, paper and fabric. The costumes bear the biographical features of the individual characters and show traces of openwork and destruction. The production relies entirely on the tension between the individual performers, on group dynamics and the power of the person in the room. In this way, we discover the feelings and conflicts of the characters, their faith and their love - is there any hope for them?

Director: Prof. Katharina Thoma
Conductor: Julius Ebert
Stage: Verena Hemmerlein
Costumes: Ben van Heyden
Musical. Direction Monteverdi: Prof. Ralf Waldner
Musikal. Direction Nemtsov: Prof. Robert HP Platz

Students of the Vocal Department, the Department of Historical Instruments and the Ensemble Neue Musik of the University of Music Würzburg

Dates: 30.05. | 31.05. | 02.06. | 04.06. 
Venue: Theater Bibrastraße
Time: 19:30 in each case

Tickets are available via Reservix and at the Falkenhaus.