Based on the extraordinary true story of sibling rebels Hans and Sophie Scholl, this haunting opera focuses on the founders of non-violent Nazi resistance movement The White Rose as they sit in cells, awaiting their execution.
In 1968, Dresden composer Udo Zimmermann adapted these events into a chamber opera. Revised in 1986, this powerful composition has touched its audience all over the globe ever since. Zimmermann’s music for a male and a female voice and a chamber orchestra has clearly been influenced by the musical aesthetics of its time, nevertheless the opera intrigues us with a remarkable cantabile quality and melodic sensibility.
Director Anna Drescher’s dramatic new staging for the Theater Biel Solothurn won the European Opera-directing Prize in 2015 and received the Best Production Award at the Armel Opera Festival in 2017.
Introductions:
Saturday 25. May at 12.15 pm: Dieter Kaegi, (intendant, Theater Orchester Biel Solothurn), Anna Drescher (director) and Peter Edwards, Head of Department of Musicology, University of Oslo,
Sunday 26. May at 6.15 pm: Francis Benichou (conductor), Anna Drescher (director) and Peter Normann Waage, author and historian.
