FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN

After the great success of GIOVANNI. EINE PASSION, director Ulrike Schwab and her team question the promise of happiness in motherhood and the ideal nuclear family, completely rethinking the idea of Hofmannsthal and Strauss’ original happy ending.

In the opera by Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the mystical fairytale world of shapeshifters and ghosts is set against the human world. If the fairy-like empress does not cast a shadow, her human husband turns to stone. So the empress sets off to earth with her nurse, because only there can she get a shadow and finally carry a child. The plan: to buy the shadow and the unborn children from the dyer, who has long since given up her desire to have children.

What unfolds here is a drama about existential relationship issues regardless of origin: love, hate, jealousy and dreams that sometimes have to be lived and sometimes buried. At the centre are questions about parenthood that require courage.

What wounds does the pain of an unfulfilled desire to have children inflict on a partnership?

What effect does it have on relationships when one person consciously decides not to have children and thus denies their partner a deep need? What happens when women are deprived of the decision to become mothers by the state, by society or by their own bodies?What are the consequences if the decision never to become a mother cannot simply be accepted?

Ulrike Schwab’s film tells the story of three couples who courageously and defiantly fight for their idea of happiness.

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WITH
Hrund Ósk Árnadóttir, Joa Helgesson, Franziska Junge, Catrin
Kirchner, David Ristau, Leon de la Garcia and the musicians
Valentin Butt, Horia Dumitrache, Martin Knoerzer, Till Kuenkler,
Luiza Labouriau, Christoph Lindner, Johannes Ragg, Nikolaus Schlierf, Tobias Schwencke, Simon Strasser

ARRANGEMENT & MUSICAL DIRECTION
Tobias Schwencke STAGE DIRECTION Ulrike Schwab STAGE & COSTUMES Pia Dederichs, Marina Stefan DRAMATURG Marion Meyer PRODUCTION MANAGER/ASSISTANT TO THE STAGE DIRECTOR Karoline Gable

Duration: approximately 110 minutes, no intermission.

Note about accessibility of the auditorium:
Seating in this production does not have a backrest.

Performances on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays with German and English subtitles for your smartphone (OPERA ACCESS)