Die Soldaten: Bayerische Staatsoper

About the Event

Witness one woman's fate, at the hands of brutal soldiers in Zimmermann's multimedia opera.

"Yesterday, today and tomorrow" is how Bernd Alois Zimmermann defined the period of activity of his opera, first performed in Cologne in 1965, based on the drama by the 'Sturm und Drang' poet Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz. Zimmermann created a multimedia musical theatre in which, through the juxtaposition and interplay of a huge orchestra, stage music, jazz combo, electronics, tape deck and loudspeakers and using the media of film projection and simultaneous stages, levels of action overlap and individual fates are reflected in a broader panorama of destruction, violation, suicide and murder.

The production, debuted last season, is conducted by the Staatsoper's new Music Director, Kirill Petrenko.

The bourgeois girl Marie Wesener moves from admirer to admirer, all from the ranks of the officers and soldiers until she gains a reputation for flightiness and becomes fair game for male lust. She ends as a whore and beggar. Her decline culminates in horrific visions of a brutalisation of mankind that spans centuries, in the apocalyptic picture of an endless spiral of constantly repeated compulsions and acts of violence by mankind against others and itself.

In German with German surtitles

Conductor: Kirill Petrenko
Director: Andreas Kriegenburg
Set design: Harald B. Thor
Costume design: Andrea Schraad
Lighting: Stefan Bolliger
Sound direction: Wolfram Nehls
Choreography: Zenta Haerter
Costume assistant: Sophie Leypold
Set assistant: Thomas Bruner
Dramaturgy: Malte Krasting

Wesener: Christoph Stephinger
Marie, his daughter: Barbara Hannigan
Charlotte, his daughter: Okka von der Damerau
Wesner's old mother: Hanna Schwarz
Stolzius: Michael Nagy
Stolzius' mother: Heike Grötzinger
Obrist (Colonel): Tareq Nazmi
Desportes: Daniel Brenna
Captain Pirzel: Kevin Conners
Padre Eisenhardt: Christian Rieger
Captain Haudy: Tim Kuypers
Captain Mary: Wolfgang Newerla
1st Officer: Peter Tantsits
2nd Officer: David Sitka
3rd Officer: Dean Power
The Countess de la Roche: Nicola Beller Carbone
The young Count: Alexander Kaimbacher
The Servant: Johannes Terne
The young Gamekeeper: Matthias Bein
The drunk Officer: Manuel Adt
1st Hauptmann: Eric Price
2st Hauptmann: Frederic Jost
3st Hauptmann: Niklas Mallmann