Young Directors 2020

A dispute between four allegorical characters in which Beauty (Bellezza) is caught in the crossfire between Pleasure (Piacere), Time (Tempo) and Disillusion (Disinganno) takes us into the heart of the world of Baroque Rome. What at first sight appears to be a philosophical-spiritual treatise from the pen of Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili inspired the young Georg Friedrich Händel to one of his most stirring works in 1707.

Viktor Ullmann’s ‘Der Kaiser von Atlantis’ is currently undergoing a veritable renaissance. The composer, who was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944, wrote his opera in the Theresienstadt concentration camp as an allegory of the political situation: when the tyrannical Emperor Overall declares war of everyone against everyone, Death goes on strike. Now no one is able to die and the country descends into chaos.