SCHROFFENSTEIN: IN THE GROUND

 

glanz&krawall and composer Sarah Taylor Ellis adapt Kleist's verbal acrobatics, and thus, for the first time, a classic play, into an opera, building a bridge from feudalism in 1800 to neo-feudalism in 2025.


In this punk opera, two families of a clan fight over an inheritance that can only be achieved by annihilating each other. Until the parents finally kill their own children, who were just trying to overcome this senseless family feud.


The historic hall becomes a spatial stage, where excavators and cement mixers are used to lay floor slabs and turf, and to erect fences. Arias alternate with recitatives and spoken scenes; desires for revenge, tirades, and bourgeois vested interests are spat out, spewed out in a cultured manner, and dismissed. In this garden paradise, deadly intrigues unfold, the upper-class facade collapses, and the face of a late-capitalist present, in which no one gives one another anything, is revealed.


Glanz&krawall is a Berlin music theater group led by director Marielle Sterra and dramaturg Dennis Depta. Since 2014, in their cross-disciplinary music theater, they have been unconcernedly seeking confrontation with the rest of society – from the high culture of opera to the poetic forlornness of a solo entertainer in a village disco.


To this end, Sterra and Depta bring formats such as wrestling, circus, punk concerts, and harness racing into theater spaces and bring their theater into urban spaces, for example, into clubs, beach resorts, or psychiatric hospitals. glanz&krawall works across generations with professionals and amateurs. Their texts are developed during the rehearsal process together with the performers.


(IN GERMAN)