Season 2019-20

MICHAEL KOHLHAAS

The year is 1532, the place Brandenburg in Germany. At a fair the Elector of Saxony meets a fortuneteller who after giving him an impressive example of her abilities writes his future on a sheet of paper, encapsulates it in an amulet and throws it into the crowd: the Elector is appalled, but is unable to recover the amulet. A horse dealer called Michael Kohlhaas finds it and is told that he should keep it closed and in his possession until a day in the future when he may be in danger: the amulet will then save his life. A few days later Kohlhaas is forced to leave his two best horses as a deposit at a toll-bar of the corrupt Junker of Tronka. Back home, he finds out that the deposit was illegal and claims his horses back, only to find that they have suffered severely in the meantime and are close to death.Kohlhaas sues the Junker, but has no chance against the powerful and influential nobleman; his claim is dismissed and his wife is fatally injured when she tries to deliver a petition to the Elector.

EUGENE ONEGIN

On the estate of Madame Larina in old Russia, the people of the estate celebrate the harvest. The estate-owner’s daughters, Olga and Tatyana, also participate. During the festivities Olga’s fiancé, Lensky, announces his arrival in the company of his friend Eugene Onegin, and soon it is apparent that the younger daughter Tatyana has fallen head over heels in love with the stranger. Tatyana writes to Onegin about her feelings, but he makes it clear to her that he is not interested. A few months later the four young people meet again at a ball. To avoid becoming entangled with Tatyana, Onegin flirts with Olga. Since Olga enjoys Onegin’s company a little too much, Lensky grows jealous and challenges Onegin to a duel. Although neither of the duellers wishes to fight the duel, they nevertheless do so with tragic consequences. Several years later Onegin again meets Tatyana, who is now a beautiful married woman. Now Onegin finally admits to his love for her and tries to win his beloved back.

THE ABDUCTION FROM THE SERAGLIO

In a fine palace in Turkey, the young English girl Konstanze and her servants Blonde and Pedrillo have been captured by the powerful pasha, Bassa Selim. The three were taken prisoner by pirates and sold to Selim, who now woos Konstanze. Selim has given Blonde as a slave to his harem overseer Osmin, who finds out that it is not so easy to bend a freedom-living Englishwoman to his will. While Konstanze and Blonde are each busy rejecting the overtures of their increasingly frustrated captors, Pedrillo discovers that Konstanze’s betrothed, the nobleman Belmonte, has come to liberate all of them. Pedrillo smuggles Belmonte into the palace garden, and their joint plan of escape is about to succeed when they are discovered and delivered to the mercy of Selim. Things do not improve when Selim finds out that Belmonte is the son of the man who forced him into exile years before. Fortunately it turns out at the last moment that Selim is not as hard-hearted ...

DRACULA

His name was Prince Vlad, but the world knows him as Count Dracula. Deriving from the dark and mysterious Transylvania of the late middle ages, the vampire Dracula (meaning ‘son of the Devil’) grows up in a time of constant war. Unable to die he has to travel through time and space to find new blood and after moving to England in pursuit of his latest love-and-death interest, Mina Harker, he is attacked by a courageous group of men led by Professor Van Helsing ...

HEARTBEAT

The earliest sensory experiences in the mother’s womb – the sound of the beating heart, the song of the blood and muted sounds from the outer world – are transformed into music in the most beautiful way. In HeartBeat (HjerteLyd), babies, toddlers and their families are invited into a special, magical physical space full of sensations and impressions of a gentle, poetic and deeply human nature. An experience that reaches from heart to heart.