Des Simplicius Simplicissimus Jugend 2024

Bilder einer Entwicklung aus dem deutschen Schicksal after Hans Jacob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen by Karl Amadeus Hartmann (original version) / idea and scenario by Hermann Scherchen, text by Wolfgang Petzet and Karl Amadeus Hartmann In German with German surtitles "Überauß lustig und maenniglich nutzlich zu lesen" is the story of the holy fool Simplicius, according to its inventor, the author Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen. A simple-minded, possibly aristocratic foundling experiences the horrors of the Thirty Years' War, becomes a soldier, explorer, charlatan and galley slave himself, travels through the dilapidated "best of all possible worlds" and ends up as a hermit in the forest. The composer Karl Amadeus Hartmann took this classic of German-language literature as the basis for his chamber opera named after the title character. Created for the drawer during the Second World War, this work is a testimony to inner emigration, an impressive manifesto against the cruelties of war. Star director Eva-Maria Höckmayr stages Hartmann's pessimistic view of the loss of civilisation as a salto mortale into the abysses of the human soul.