Die tote Stadt

After the death of his wife Marie, Paul has closed himself off in Bruges in a cocoon of pain and memory. But then Marietta breaks into his world. The life-sparkling sensuality of his new acquaintance awakens long-repressed longings in the grieving widower, which he tries to fight with increasing panic. But life cannot be stopped...

How far can our grief go without uprooting us? Two years after the end of the First World War, the only 23-year-old Erich Wolfgang Korngold put this question into the mouth of his protagonist, which had become the oppressive life theme of a traumatised generation. With the lush colours of the late romantic orchestral apparatus, the later Hollywood composer sensitively illustrates, in the style of a dream narrative, the painful process of a grieving man who must let go of the past in order to be ready for the future.

Director Daniel Kramer has made an international name for himself with his atmospherically dense productions. With "Die tote Stadt" he makes his
his debut at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein.