Das Paradies und die Peri

The Peri - an angelic mythical creature. Fallen from paradise and thrown into the world, she is denied a return to heaven. It takes three attempts before the gates open for her again: It takes more than the drop of blood of a young man, martyred in war, and the last sigh of a girl who died because she did not want to leave her lover, who was sick with the plague, alone. Only the last gift, the tear of an old man who bitterly regrets his own life's sins at the sight of a child, will enable Peri to enter the kingdom of heaven. Robert Schumann's secular oratorio Paradise and the Peri is based on the oriental epic poem by the Irish poet Thomas Moore. In Hamburg, the Persian myth narrative becomes a panopticon of the very recent past.
The narrative thread of our present day strings together global crises like pearls on a necklace: pandemic, war, climate change. The world is under threat. Art, which often tells of moments of redemption, cannot save us, but it does bring with it the possibility of insight. And empathy. Paradise and the Peri opens the artistic direction of Tobias Kratzer, who welcomes the Hamburg audience with this great choral work: “Welcome to us!” The evening is not an opera, but it reflects what musical theater can be. And where it reaches its limits.